St. Isidro Festival

Young girl in traditional dress

Her sweet face

Adults in traditional dress

Sunny Sunday in Madrid

Children playing on "Venus"

A hillside of potato chips

Festivals and Presidents

Today is the Festival of San Isidro, the patron saint of Madrid. Madrilenos are out in full force. Children young and old walking arm in arm with their parents, eating ice cream, and city workers are preparing the city for a long night of dancing in the streets. I'm torn. Maybe I'll go out, but there is lots of drama at our hotel that also has my attention. Presidents and Prime Ministers from 10 nations including France, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil are meeting on Monday at the Inter-Continental where we're staying. Yesterday the strong men arrived; drivers and body guards in black, and today the levels of police presence on the streets and surrounding this building make me feel like we're in siege instead of staying in a hotel that is hosting a meeting of heads of state. Protecting world leaders looks like a lot of hurry up and wait to me. Maybe it's like the bull fight we saw last night.....a slow ritual dance that I know nothing about.

I want to write more about the bullfight, but I can't just yet. Mary and I went because we wanted to experience this contest that has such a long history in Spanish culture. I've read that the queen of Spain hates it, her husband, the king likes it, and their daughter likes it, too! Barcelona has just banned it, but last night the bullring was filled with nearly 25,000 people.

Visual Madrid

Bull Fight at Ventas Bullring

Picasso's "Guernica" at the Reina Sofia

Mary buying art from a young Chinese artist

"Venus" at Plaza de Colon

Hail storm

Hola!

Madrid

A short two hour flight from Paris, and we’ve changed languages, cuisines, and architectural styles, but not weather. For most of our trip it has been cloudy, unseasonably cold, rainy, and sometimes my bones are chilled like they are in middle February in the Northwest. As we left the Prado today we were pelted with hail!

My friend Carma (we met at an artist’s residency in Mojacar in 2005) lives in Madrid, and we met her for dinner on our first night in the city. We walked through the historic areas of the city center and even though it was a chilly evening we participated in the “paseo” (evening stroll) stopping for tapas (smoked anchovy inside a pungent dark green pickle) and a superb meal of suckling pig. The walls and floors of the tapas bar and the restaurant were covered with tiles decorated in colorful Islamic patterns reminding me that the Arabs conquered the Iberian peninsula early in the 8th century, and stayed for another 300 years.

My Spanish is limited to greetings and farewells, counting (to 10 only), thank you, and please. My tongue and throat refuse to move in the same direction so I can’t make the characteristic Spanish “r” sound, but I like listening to the lilt and rhythm of the language.

I saw the El Greco’s today at the Prado, and I love his painterly distinction between heaven and earth . It’s not the clear horizon line of the Midwest earth and sky, but a mystical blurry edge support by a cast of flame-like characters who sit and don’t sit in an ephemeral space. I think El Greco will have to make an entrance into my “Heartland” series. The Prado has a “star” list of works of art and boasts major collections by the Spanish painters Goya, Velazquez. I feel very comfortable in this museum, and the new wing is a stunning airy addition filled with glass and light.

More Pictures from Paris

St. Chapelle, interior

St. Chapelle, interior

Rose Window, Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame Cathedral

Pictures from Paris

So close and yet so far away!

Two "Winged Victories"

For more convenient access to the kitchen the Italians cut a door into Leonardo's "Last Supper", and the French have cut a window into the side of the Louvre.

Louvre and the glass pyramid that covers the subterranean entrance.

Monet's "Waterlilies" at l'Orangerie