Pablo y Sofia

After weeks of procrastination we finally returned to the Reina Sofia (gallery home to Guernica) to see the Picasso pieces borrowed from Paris. We went today because all the galleries and museums in Madrid are free today though obviously busy as a result. I had been to see the Picasso museum in Paris a few years ago but clearly his work is always worth another visit. I couldn't get over just how busy it was, I've never seen a gallery thrum and buzz like it. It became clear, predominantly because a loud American woman was holding court on the subject, how much people want to be able to explain his, and presumably other artist's, work. There is an innate drive for knowledge in most people, perhaps it's part of the human condition, to find new ways to do things, to develop the methods and ideas already posited but this seems different from the desire to find explanations for everything, the need for some to be able to know the reasons underlying any action. Maybe it's not so different at all, maybe it's the subject that creates the differences; whereas in science an action or decision is, normally, founded upon evidence, whether it's empirical or theoretical, in art such decisions are or perhaps more accurately can be based on personal impulses, desires or feelings. Of course you could equally argue the opposite was true but I feel the roots of both disciplines are as varied as the approaches to explain their results. Science lends itself to a dissection of it's parts, always being the sum of it's constituents, art must be teased apart and the whole always taken into account as the individual elements would not, if added in a different way or a different order create the same conclusion.

I'm not sure I have any conclusion of my own other than I think that sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, it is not necessary to understand a piece in the sense that such and such a part is influenced by this and that this part comes from this but rather to entertain the whole of the work in your mind's eye whilst remembering that regardless of it's origins this is an entirely new entity. That it is not vital to know why the piece was created or how to enjoy it.

Phew! Anyway we took some pictures in the uber cool glass lifts, is it just me that still feels the same way I did at 5 when going up in a lift?