Memoirs of a Worldly Guy
The Prado was, in fact, a slight disappointment from the standpoint of notable Spanish architecture. It looked like a college laboratory or one of those windowless high securitys buildings in what had been the limitless bean fields of Santa Ana before the military started spending billions in California to support the war in Vietnam.
But for a dedicated teacher I had in high school I doubt if I would have had any interest in fine art at all. She purchased (at her own expense) lithographs of paintings by fifteen or twenty famous English, Dutch, Flemish, Italian and other national artists then required us to paste the lithograph into one corner of a page in the scrapbook each of us had. The rest of each page had to be filled with details of the painter, nationality, date of birth, etcetera and a commentary about the painting itself, all enscripted with calligraphic pens. By the time we had come to the end of the year we had learned enough about a few of the more famous painters of every age and felt more comfortable with them and many others.
As a result I felt compelled to visit the National Gallery in London within a few days of my first arrival in the great city. It was there that I soon learned my two priorities for "Art Gallery Visiting- Helmer style". It took me several hours to find out what my likes and dislikes were. I got a sore back and aching feet wandering through rooms filled with religious paintings funded by Popes and wealthy Christian families. Some of it is worth seeing--once, but eventually I tired of seeing large paintings featuring Christ's agony on the cross while surrounded by cherubim and other heavenly personages (most of them in nightshirts), all of them equipped with glowing golden haloes. Peter Paul Rubens was an exception, of course, and most of his good work e.g. "The Rape of the Sabines", was conveniently situated in the room next to what I eventually referred to as "The Rembrandt Room". Rembrandt was sufficiently marvellous to hold my attention but I was strangely attracted to another painting by a Netherlander called Van Dyck. He was famous in his own right, of course, but my attention was caught by his portrait of Cornelius Van der Geest; no matter where you stood in the room, the eyes of Cornelius Van der Geest followed you.
As soon as I had identified the impressionist painting locations I had determined what I wanted to see and for future visits it sufficed to go past Van Gogh's "Yellow Chair" at a brisk pace then lope over to the Rembrandt Room to see if things had changed at all. No! they hadn't changed; Cornelius was looking directly into my eyes as though he had heard my footsteps approaching. Spooky!
The bottom line was that any time I was near Trafalgar Square on my subsequent visits to London I could whip into the National Gallery, say "Howdy" to my old friend Cornelius and be back about my business in less than half an hour. I suppose I have already alluded to my second art gallery viewing priority---don't do more than an
hour a day of viewing! This was particularly important when dealing with a museum like the Prado--an acknowledged treasure house of Spanish and European art, with its labyrinth of rooms and many thousands of paintings.
Bear in mind that Spain was still in recovery from a war in which it hadn't participated directly, although it had suffered through a three or four year struggle which pitted brother against brother and was generally involved with the post-war effects of World War II. This had obviously accounted for the incredibly low prices we had experienced all the way from England to Spain and North Africa, and it resulted in the disappointment we experienced when we entered the Prado. Frankly, it looked not unlike a bachelor apartment in Earl's Court that had not been visited by a cleaning lady for several months.
The lighting was bad, bordering on unacceptable and the walls looked as though they were badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. Some of the most splendid paintings in the world were on walls suffering from shadows and lack of light. I am aware that all of these problems have since been addressed and that we saw the museum at its worst.
'There are three painters we should look for first,' I said, 'Velasquez, who set the pace, as it were, Goya and El Greco. El Greco wasn't actually a Spaniard and of course his name, El Greco, is Spanish for "The Greek" I think there are some of the works of Picasso here but we may have to suss them out. He is still living and is the most prolific of all Spaniards. He is Spanish but spends much of his time at his home in France. Unfortunately, many of his thousands of paintings are in other museums but we may get lucky.'
We might have progressed through the museum in a more orderly fashion had we not inadvertently come upon one of Goya's most famous works, "The Maja Desnuda".
'Jaysus!' Bill exclaimed . 'That really is incredible! I'm surprised that they allow it to be shown in light of what you and Dick have told me about the behaviour of the police forces in Ibiza.'
'Just another example of typical Spanish illogical behaviour,' I said ruefully.
Bill's quickly-acquired obsession with the Nude Maja was making substantial inroads into our schedule in that he seemed reluctant to move on in a timely mannner.
'Just as well there's a barrier there or you'd be up there with your nose in it.'
'No need for vulgarity,' Bill said indignantly.
'Come along, there are other paintings to sniff--I mean to see,' I said.
Bill joined me with reluctance as we passed into other rooms with paintings by other masters.
Velazquez, Goya and El Greco are considered to be the great triumvirate of Spanish painting, which is true to a degree, notwithstanding the fact that El Greco was within a few years of his death when Velazquez was born. Francisco de Goya was born nearly a hundred years after the death of Diego Velazqez, so, go figure, eh?
We soon came to one of the most famous of all Velazquez paintings " The Ladies in Waiting" in which the great painting master includes himself as painting in the background. The irony of the great "triumvirate" theory is that although El Greco and Velazquez could technically be called contemporaries, Velazquez was only fifteen years old when El Greco died and Francisco de Goya was born nearly one hundred years after the death of Velazquez. But the experts continue to insist that there were a sequential series of each painter in turn having his work influenced by his predecessor. To cap it all off, there are some that claim Titian, a famous Italian whom needs no introduction, was the revolutionary painter whose work affected all of these successive painters--or so they say!
As a result, some cynical person might come to the conclusion that all painters who deign to touch brush and paint to canvas in the years to come, needs must bow their heads in obeisance to the great Titian (and carry that monkey on their backs for the rest of their working lives).
We found some of Picasso's work eventually and I was gratified to see examples of his early work which demonstrated his early ability to draw natural figures beautifully.
'This guy Picasso was unbelievable', I said. 'He was winning gold medals in his early teens and has been turning out prodigious quantities of work of all genres. Regrettably, when I saw his first work it was exclusively cubism. I had no idea of the incredible range the man had; he was still in his teens when he won the gold medal at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts. He was, and still is under the influence of not only Titian, but every other painter with whom he comes in contact. He went to Paris a couple of times early in the century and absorbed the styles of Gaugin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas without difficulty. His Blue Period actually resembles the work of El Greco.'
'You'd think the guy would relax and take things easy for a while.'
'Not Picasso--- the guys a workaholic! He's in his early seventies and shows no sign of slowing down. Since his Blue Period he's had a Rose Period, a Protocubism Period, various types of cubism, both painting and sculpture, realism and surrealism and I'm buggered if I know what else. Even the hotshot avant-garde painters and critic types in New York were confused by his early work in Protocubism.'
'He sounds like he was not as crazy as he was cabbage-looking,' Bill said.
'Amen to that,' I said. 'Now that I think of it, the greatest painting of all his works is still missing; when that Nazi prick Francisco Franco called for the Germans to bomb the Basque town of Guernica, Picasso decided to paint a large mural, referred to by some as the greatest painting of the twentieth century. It is primarily symbolic portraying his feelings about the horrors of war. Regrettably, it was sent to New York at the outbreak of World War II; it's still there!'
When we came to a section that contained a couple of famous nude paintings by Titian I suggested that we go and have a cold beer before we started vaulting over the barriers; fortunately Bill was adamant so we stayed on. We first encountered "Danae with Nursemaid " which effectively blew our impressionable minds. Then we came to "Worship of Venus" and "Bacchanal of the Adrians". By the time we had finished eyeballing the "Rape of Europa' we were agreed that cold beers might allay the feeling of steam coming out of our ears.
'Right, time's up! Let's move it out of here!'
'We've barely got started,' Bill complained.
'Never mind, I told you the rules, besides, my back is starting to ache already.'
Once we were back on the street we walked along until we came to a restaurant with its menu posted in the window; paella was included so we entered.
Fortunately they had a head waiter who spoke English. 'There are only two of us but we'd hate to leave your country without first having had paella,' I said, 'is it possible to do one for two people?'
'Somewhat inconvenient,' he replied. 'The minimum we prepare is usually for four people.'
'Do you mind telling me how much that costs?' I said.
'Sesenta, sixty pesetas,' he replied. I turned to Bill. 'Are you ready for a typical Spanish "gut-buster" ?' I asked him.
'I am if you are,' he said heroically.
'Right, then,' I said to the head waiter. 'Paella for four it is--lead us to our fate.'
Seated at a table I said 'We better have a litre of good dry house white--I presume you have such,'
'Yessir,' he said, with a faint smile.
We had finished more than half of the wine before a young lady appeared from the kitchen carrying the paella in a flat steel dish with handles on each side, wrapped in white towels. 'Cuidado senors,' she said, 'eso es muy caliente!' 'Be careful, gentlemen, this is very hot!' as the steaming dish was set in the middle of the table. They hadn't stinted on the dish's preparation; I could see large unpeeled sea shrimp, opened mussels, olives, tomatoes, sausage chunks and various pieces of what turned out to be veal, chicken and artichoke hearts, red and green peppers, all resting on a bed of yellow saffron-tinted rice. A strong odour of garlic wafted my way..
'Well, there you have it, such as it is; if you require a second helping, just shout!'
Bill required no instructions, he had already begun to peel a shrimp. Even with the help of the wine, which was cold and dry, we soon realized we had involved ourselves in a sort of modern-day food eating contest. As pissed as we already were, we eventually concluded that we would require another half litre of wine to wash down the remaining pieces of the meal. An hour and a half after our arrival we paid our bill and lurched back out of the restaurant, hailed a taxi and returned to our hotel room for a nap. We still had a little more than two hours before the bullfight so asked the desk for a wake-up call in case it took longer to sleep off our gluttony than we estimated.
— The End —