The Guggenheim Museum is the reason we visited Bilbao. The city has become an international art destination because of the Frank Gehry’s brilliantly designed museum. This gleaming, curvilinear, titanium clad building, successfully transformed this industrial, northern Spanish city into a global icon in 1997. It’s been eleven years since the museum opened, and I was thrilled to finally be able to fulfill my dream of seeing it in person. I imagine that I was as awe struck as the first person to have seen it must have been. Its complex shape renders it photogenic in the changing light of the day, and I photographed it in morning, afternoon, and evening, mesmerized by the form. The interior spaces were soaring, elegant, and exciting. Gehry artfully brought his curved forms indoors with stone, glass, and steel, to mirror the exterior. Glassed elevator cars and balconies allowed the visitor to view the exhibitions  and the architecture from many vantage points. Some galleries had lofty, soaring ceilings, while others housed exhibitions in intimate spaces. There were six exhibitions on view when we visited: the featured Juan Muños retrospective, a Matthew Ritchie installation, an exhibition of paintings, furniture and objects entitled “Surreal Things”.  A minimalist exhibition of paintings including works by Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, and Robert Mangold was featured in a large ground floor gallery. Eight monumental steel sculptures by Richard Serra are on permanent exhibition in the largest gallery, and three monolithic classical female figures in bright red paint by Jim Dine are exhibited in the glassed areas of the ground floor. All these works of art animated the cavernous spaces in an intelligent and elegant manner. The Muñoz show limited 20 viewers at at time to walk around his large group of (100 or more?) gray, barely-smaller-than-life-sized figures entitled “Thirteen Laughing at Each Other”. A model train track, hidden in a niche, moved his miniature pair of  sculptures backwards and forwards throughout the day. Nearby, his bronze sculpture, referencing Dega’s circus performer, hung by a rope clamped in its clenched teeth, pivoting.  The “Surreal Things” exhibition focused on the varied media of the surrealist movement, including furniture, objects, jewelry, paintings, and sculpture. This traveling exhibition, originating at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, was beautifully conceived and professionally installed in this, its third venue. A film showing a Paris apartment designed by Le Corbusier, commissioned by a Mexican millionaire, illustrated the fascinating mix of illusion and fantasy which pervaded surrealist art. The film showed a daisy clad lawn which filled a private terrace, which overlooked the Eiffel Tower and L’Arc de Triomphe, both partially hidden by a wall. Hedges moved to reveal these monuments, while a fireplace mantel and an oil painting decorated the outdoor “living room”.  Dali’s “Lobster Telephone” and his “Mae West’s Face as the Interior Design of an Apartment” were exhibited, along with his “Mae West Lips Sofa”, a triptych painting entitled “Girl Skipping Rope” and a shaped framed painting entitled “A Pair of Lovers with Clouds in their Heads”. The familiar was also enjoyable in this exciting venue as we walked through each of the eight sculptures by Richard Serra. Enormous torqued steel constructions were surprising with every turn, though I had ventured through many similar pieces in New York. Serra’s black oil stick paintings on canvas, stapled to the wall in the minimalist exhibition, underscored the power of shape, creating the illusion of space beyond. The Matthew Ritchie exhibition,  which I had also viewed elsewhere, was delightfully fresh in the Guggenheim’s large room, which it filled on the floors, walls, and in three-dimensions in the center space. His explanation of this complex work of art, that we humans know only 2% of reality. His philosophy includes the acknowledgement that “we are all in the dark”!

PHOTOS: Left Column: 1. Henry & Jourdan in front of the Guggenheim, Bilbao. 2. The “fountains” of fire in the reflection pool. These jets of fire performed every  5 minutes in anticipation of the evening sky. This photo was captured after 9 PM, but it was still light in Bilbao! 3. Louise Bourgeois’ cast bronze“Spider”. 4. View from a balcony looking down onto Juan Munoz’s “Thirteen Laughing at Each Other”. Center, Top:  Interior view: Elevators. and skylight. Center, Bottom: Richard Serra’s installation of eight sculptures taken from a balcony. Right Column: 1. & 2.: Exterior views, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. 3. Jeff Koon’s sculpture made of flowers facing toward Bilbao’s center. 4. Main Entrance of the museum. The stairway is lined with bronze sculptures by Juan Munóz.

JOURDAN ARPELLE-ZIEGLER                                           BACK TO MAP PAGE