One rainy day we took a drive to the world famous Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, not only to admire the amazing structure that houses the Museum but to also understand a little about what constitutes “modern art” these days. The nearest car park with spaces was a good mile away so we were able to admire the old ornate Gothic buildings in the town and squares en route.

The building, now in it’s 20th year, was built to suggest fluidity, reminscent of fish scales, making it reflective and see through and this is certainly achieved by the titanium, glass and metal that surround it. The views from any of its 3 floors are so different.

We were engrossed in the ground floor display of massive metal eliptical and spiral structures that are bent and bowed to give the effect of space and dizzying motion, yet it is only the person that is moving, not the structure. Another mind bending display was a neon wall with vertical written flashing writing which when viewed from the 2nd floor almost made you want to jump over the balcony and fall into the flow of the words.

We can tick off the bucket list seeing a real life Andy Warhol painting, the Museum houses the 10 metre long “150 faces of Marilyn Munroe” and we were mesmerised by the 3D films and photos by Bill Viola, but the rest of the displays we really didn’t “get”. How can you call an empty metal box with a hole cut into the top and side “Art”? It was ingeniously entitled “Box with a Hole”, very clever!!! Another artist called Georg Baselitz painted massive (15foot high) pictures of dismembered, fractured soldiers (the works are entitled “Heroes”) but they were all displaying large inappropriate male appendages and I really can’t imagine soliders went to war with their zips flying low!

However, it was a fascinating day out, and we both agree that we are not really fans of “modern art”. Some pictures below of our day out.

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