Round It Goes

The Round is a music/art/spoken word event that began in Seattle's Fremont Abbey four or five years ago. The idea is a simple one: local musicians, who may normally never appear on stage together, sit together in a row facing their audience, taking turns playing songs they wouldn't normally play. The audience all faces forward and listens; this is no barroom show, where people yell into their companion's ear just to be heard over the din. Most of the musicians choose to go acoustic, while in the background three different artists paint on canvases, and spoken word poets come forward to give impassioned recitations during breaks in the music.

It's a once a month event, and I manage to get to it, oh, about once a year. Fortunately I made it to last night's holiday show at the Triple Door with a couple of friends. What a way to kick off December. The Round can be a little irreverent, and the performers' backgrounds are varied, but it always comes together in an amazing way, and there is always a spiritual element underneath it all. We listened to musicians ranging from Mark Pickerel to Star Anna to Jesse Sykes to Damien Jurado, and many more, singing songs of bleak midwinter and songs praising the baby Jesus. In the end, everyone came back on stage for an obviously unrehearsed rendition of John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over).

It's the unrehearsed part that makes The Round special. The backup band provides improvised harmony and rhythm throughout the night, musicians try out songs they never thought they'd perform in public, and the painters attempt to bring their visions to light before the night ends. Taken as a whole, it's a beautiful thing.

Monemvasia

While the beach is rocky, the crystal clear waters of Monemvasia's beaches is still enticing, especially on a warm day like today. Michael and I, anticipatingly the warm water we'd sampled (hands only) in much colder Kardimyli, waded in eagerly.

"Oy! Cold!" I cried.

The water was not so warm after all.

But while each step exposed new skin to a shock of cold, the reality was that it only took a few seconds to adjust, and soon we were swimming in the soothing salt water. Joined by two others in our group, we found ourselves drifting further and further from shore with very little effort. Before long we realized we were more than half way to the rock island that put Monemvasia on the map. The challenge was on! We swam all the way to the island's pier, then managed to make it back through now choppy waters.

We'd visited the island earlier in the day, learning about squirting cucumbers and all other manner of plant life from our guide, David. We hiked to the ruins of the citadel, winding up the steep sides of the natural rock fortification, marveling at the sweeping views of the village below and the deep blue Mediterranean. Michael, attracted by the idea of making as many cucumbers squirt as possible, found a long, thorny stick with which to poke them. The small, prickly wild cucmbers really do squirt - somettimes spraying people as far as five feet from the offending cuke. It's a strangely addicting habit, walking along poking at little green globes in hopes you'll get it to explode.

We decided to commemorate our time in Monemvasia with a poster print of the town created by a local artist. Stylistically rendered, the poster shows the town nestled against the rocky bluff, ruins and the church of Agia Sofia dotting the hilltop. The artist himself showed me the work he was currently finishing - he painstakingly inked each dot and line to sreate a web of miniscule geometric designs framing boxes of color.

"I've worked on this for one month, every day," he told me.

I was impressed with his dedication, and asked if I might take a photograph with him, showing the man behind the art.

"No, take a picture of the posters," he said. "I am nothing."

Nothing, that is, if not modest.

But Monemvasia has been a highlight of the trip for me so far, and thanks to him, I will have always have a way to remember it.

At the Guggenheim

Enough with food! Let's talk about something else. After all, I don't want to give the false impression that there's nothing to do in the Basque country other than eat (although really, would that be a bad thing?). The last couple of days on the tour have been very busy, and I just haven't had the time to write. After a pleasant trip to Gernika on Monday, Tuesday was a very full day spent in Bilbao, the largest city of the region, a formerly industrial city that has transformed itself into a modern powerhouse of modern art.

Most people have probably heard of the Guggenheim, if for no other reason than the controversy that was created when Frank Gehry's architectural masterpiece was revealed to the world in 1997. No matter what the opinions may have been then, so far the place seems to have withstood the test of time, kicking off a renaissance of new art and architecture in the city center and along the river. Personally, I love it. From every angle the museum offers a new perspective, with graceful titanium walls curving voluptuously to the street below. Many would say, and I would agree, that the building itself is the Guggenheim's greatest work of art.

Inside the museum, you never know what you might find. There are a few permanent exhibits, but much of the space is devoted to enormous temporary exhibits, currently including China's Cai Guo-Qiang (perhaps best known for creating the opening ceremony pyrotechnics for the Beijing Olympics) and Japan's Murakami (well known for his crazy, often psychedelic, anime influenced works). The tour members, well... some of them loved it. Some of them didn't. I think (hope) all, however, were at least happy to see the famous building up close and in person.

The great thing about modern art is that it can be about absolutely anything, in any style, and all one has to do is stand back and look. Maybe you'll love it, maybe you'll hate it, but any reaction is allowed. For me, it's a break from the psychological heaviness of a museum of the Old Masters. It's the junk food of the art world! Well, that's an exaggeration, and there is certainly modern art out that carries important, and sometimes disturbing, messages. But overall, watching cars explode in a shower of blinking lights overhead, or getting lost in the creepy yet cute faces of Japanese cartoon characters recharges me after days of history, culture, and "important" art. And with the many museums of Berlin only a few days away for me, the Guggenheim was just the break I needed.

When It Rains, It Pours

This evening, I was about to step out of a Barcelona metro station when I noticed that the weather had turned from merely overcast to dumping buckets of rain. With half a dozen others, I scrunched up in the small entrance, eyes fixed on the stairs just outside, hoping this would only be a fifteen minute shower.

Eventually, I just had to make a run for it. Fortunately I was only a block from the hostel, where I was able to grab my umbrella before heading out on a twenty minute search for the local phone shop. Everywhere people were huddled under doorways, while the brave few ran quickly by under their umbrellas. It gave me a good chance to ask - on four different occasions - just where the street for this phone shop was, which I figured was a good opportunity to practice my Spanish. Besides, today is my husband's birthday, and no little rainstorm was going to keep me from making this call. Nor was the fact that I myself am currently under the weather.

Yes, I'm afraid I'm sick; it's not just the jet lag. Despite the fact that I stayed in bed until noon today (which, for me, is absolutely unheard of), my body and brain have been lagging all day, and my throat persists in being sore. It was a relief, after having made my phone call, to sit in a bar eating a zucchini tortilla (that's Spanish for omelet), traditional Barcelonan tomato bread, and drinking hot tea. Sadly, it will be another early night for me, as I'm determined to nip this in the bud. I feel suspiciously like I did when I was sick for more than week earlier this year, and that's an experience I can do without while on tour.

But despite my long stay in bed last night, I can't claim to have slept particularly well. The good news is that I believe Barcelona must have won their football match last night. I was awoken in the middle of the night to sounds of cheering, clapping, and endless honking horns that seemed to go on for an hour. It sure sounded like fun, just not fun for me at that particular time. After things quieted down, I still slept fitfully until the morning traffic picked up and the city came back to life as its noisy self, at which point I lay in bed wondering why I had to be born such a light sleeper.

Due to the weather and my general lack of ambition for anything too active, I chose to visit the Catalan National Museum and the Miro Foundation today, well worth the trip just to see Miro's enormous tapestry of abstract blues, yellows, and reds hanging in the gallery. Tomorrow I will have to be a little more lively, as I've booked a two hour gourmet tour that meets at 10:30. In the meantime, I think my bed is calling me.

Inspiring Impressionism

Impressionist exhibits are the Nutcracker ballet of the art museum world - in other words, they're cash cows. Any decent broad-based, art-through-the ages institution, at least one that likes to think of itself as "world class", will throw out the obligatory impressionist show every three to five years and watch the crowds come in, people willingly handing over their cash who otherwise may never have darkened a museum's door. This allows the museum in turn to support the avant-garde exhibits that only museum members and art hipsters will patronize. Well, and also those few who come in with puzzlement creasing their brows as they peer from one room to the next, not sure if these art museums are really all they're cracked up to be.

That, at least, is the cynical take on Impressionism exhibitions. What was once revolutionary - so much so that the art establishment of the time didn't even consider it art - is now fodder for millions of posters, mugs, and refrigerator magnets gracing the homes of everyone from rural housewives to college freshmen. In this sense, Impressionism has become perhaps the most egalitarian art in the world. No one will think you a snob for liking Monet's waterlily paintings, but copies of Roman busts or post-modern multi-media collages may come across as a bit pretentious.

But what is it that makes Impressionism so enduringly popular? At the Seattle Art Museum's Inspiring Impressionism exhibit, which I visited tonight, I felt like I gained some insight into this phenomenon. And I got to see some beautiful paintings. After all, I enjoy the Impressionists, too.

I have to give credit to SAM for putting a new twist on the art of Impressionism exhibits. Attempting to show the inspiration that the Impressionists drew from the Old Masters - whether they admitted it or not - the show was a fascinating look at how these artists gave a new twist to old themes, and how they brought back even older themes that had become passe in art at the time, such as scenes from everyday life and landscape painting.

It was striking to see the similarities and differences juxtaposed. Usually museums are strictly categorized by style and era, often chronologically. Here the comparison of distinctly different styles gave one the ability to both look at the art with the benefit of distance between now and then, and to imagine oneself a peer of these artists as they came to the Louvre to copy the Old Masters. The older paintings were beautiful in their attention to detail and realism. But the Impressionists had their own take on reality, one where color and movement trumped discipline and detail. And while the Old Masters amaze us with their skill at composition and realism, the Impressionists shock us into seeing the vitality and color that surround us, even in everyday life.

This, at least, is my impression (bad pun, I know - sorry!). As any Art History 101 student knows, the rise of impressionism, giving way to the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Mondrian, coincides with the advent of the age of photography. What use was absolute realism in the face of the camera? A photograph was even more realistic, less expensive, and, eventually, accessible to the masses. What was the purpose of art at this point?

Maybe, if art could capture that exquisite fleeting moment when the sun glances off the river, when a mother takes her child into her lap, maybe it could speak to us in a way a photograph and even the Old Masters can't. With paint slapped on seemingly without effort and brilliant colors, no wonder we're excited by this art. It takes something so often seen as mundane, and allows us to see it as something fresh and new.

Two paintings in particular stood out to me after I left the exhibit. One was a Renoir, a scene of a couple leaning in towards each other, sitting in a garden beneath sun-dappled trees. Renoir perfectly captures the idea of clear summer light filtering through the leaves, reflecting off the woman's white dress. It's almost as if you can see the play of the sunbeams and feel their warmth.

The other painting I was drawn to was actually not one of the Impressionists', but a portrait in profile by Fragonard of a girl reading. Although painted a hundred years prior, I could see the foreshadowing of the Impressionist movement here. The large, flat strokes reminded me of Manet's work, and the girl's brilliant yellow dress and red pillow gave it a shock of color not seen in many of the other earlier paintings. And much like the Impressionists, that red pillow was not merely painted in red, but also blues and purples and streaks of white, giving it surprising depth.

This is, of course, only what I personally experienced. As to be expected on the last Thursday of a popular exhibit, the museum was fairly crowded, and I'm sure everyone had their own opinions. But is the fact that an exhibit is so popular really a bad thing? Isn't it good to have art that almost everyone can enjoy, and that gets people of all backgrounds into art museums? Cash cow though it may be, I don't think the allure of Impressionism is going to wane any time soon. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.