Barcelona loves its artists, especially Antoni Gaudí and Pablo Picasso. The former is showcased by his houses like the Casa Batlló and grander projects like the Sagrada Familia and Park Güell, and the latter at the Picasso Museum. Assuming the ticket line would look similar to Sunday's, I bought in advance. A quick Metro trip and I'm in, easy as paella*.
The museum houses the collection of Jaume Sabartés, Barcelonan and Picasso's BFF whenever he was in town. Indeed many of the paintings and sketches feature him as a subject. We start with the early years. Traditional styles, formal training, school assignments. The kid had talent, which I knew because of the awards he won.
Let me digress for a moment. Recently I attended an Aphex Twin listening party. Before putting the records on (yeah actual records) the host read a review of the album by someone who clearly has no business reviewing electronic music, as they don't even like the genre. This is roughly how seriously you should take my art criticism.
Anyway, I rather liked the young stuff. My favorite was called Science and Charity, or something like that. Moving on to a more impressionistic style, I enjoyed these works too. Sketches and x-ray videos helped bring the process of creation to life. But here comes the blue period and cubism, where Picasso becomes PICASSO, and now you've lost me. See, I've never liked Picasso. I feel his work is the kind of thing you need an art degree to appreciate, like a Frank Gehry building. To the uninitiated, it's just an ugly mess. My hope is that I would be able to educate myself a bit, but the museum was of no help here. Alas. Time to seek out lunch.
* I have no idea how easy/hard it is to make paella
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I never made it to the Picasso museum. No regrets :-).
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