Taking in the Goog (coarse language)

Right, the Bilbao Guggenheim, modern art, I guess we won't be seeing too many "Adoration of the Magi"'s or "David with the head of Goliath"'s here. Bloody hell, how do you think up a building like that? "Inspired by the shapes of fish and boats" the brochure says, it's like a shiny pile of mangled boxes and tin cans. There's a giant puppy made of flowers out the front, that's pretty cool. Don't think I'll bother with the audio tour this time, oh it's included in the price is it, I'll have one then. 13€! Christ that's stiff. Right, in we go, what's this in the entry room, five thin columns scrolling words in LED lights, in red in English on one side and in blue and Basque on the other, it casts a nice light, yeah, this is pretty cool, not sure what it appeals to in me but I like it! Room one then, there's a Rothko over there but I'm not looking at that yet, here is a painting with a cream background about three quarters covered by jagged brown with a rough red line down the left and a splash of blue over there too. A child could have painted this. The brown "seems to quiver" does it audio guide lady? No it doesn't, it doesn't do anything except baffle me, on to the Rothko, a white rectangle on a yellow rectangle on a red rectangle, what a fucking fraud this bloke is, a cheat, "floating rectangles" my arse, how did he ever get any attention? Some critic must have been bored and decided to see just how much power he had, things better improve here or I'm going to miss that 13€. On to a canvas covered in black with a small patch of white down the lower left, I can't quite hear all the audio guide comments through he white noise of my rage and embarrassment but I think the "courage " of the artist is mentioned, yes, it is certainly courageous to produce this and expect to be taken seriously, moving on very quickly now. Another room, here's something I can get behind, a space scene with mangled metal and a part of an American flag, with added mirrored fabric at each end so you can look at a warped reflection of the picture from the side, why on earth do I like this? Here's Warhol, "150 multicoloured Marilyns", you have to hand it to the bloke for getting so much mileage out of one trick, he's a fraud too but he's being honest about it. Robert Rauschenburg's Barge, this is good, again if only because it has some identifiable images in it, maybe that's what I need, just one element I understand, this has plenty, pictures of football players and modes of transport and birds pasted on with fairly random black and white paint, okay. Next is "nine cycles of..." something or other, basically the same destructive looking painting nine times: a cream background, a grid and two bursts of pinky reddy violent stuff, I don't mind this either, it's got moods as you walk along it, up and down, like mine in this gallery. Yves Klein is next, so is is where that band gets its name, Yves Klein Blue! The audio guide says this was painted using Klein's "human brush" technique, where he has naked woman covered in paint roll around on a canvas. Ummmm, should we be commending this perversion? Why not get people of both genders to roll around in the paint, why not roll around yourself, yes yes, he wanted some distance from the work, but this just sounds like an excuse to have someone else do it, and why not naked women? Why not clothed women? It's just pure arse that this canvas ended up with a leaping figure shape in the middle, nice painting actually, but maybe the naked woman's name should be on it?! Perhaps Klein's perversion is the point? Richard Serra's "Matter of Time" now, a long room full of installations you can walk through, spirals and ellipses with the walls closing in and fanning out, walking around this is making me dizzy and fearfulandthen Iget to the centre and can breathe again, the artist's commentary is good too, describing the shapespretty matter of factlyand not crapping on about his message, whatever that is. All the different shapes sound pretty complicated, cambered ellipses and so forth, he must have been thinking about it for a loooong time, if nothing else it's disconcerting, is that enough? Mixed going so far and I fear that Anish Kapoor upstairs isn't going to make things any easier, need lunch first, what? We have to leave the museum and hand in our guide to get to the cafe, Frank Gehry can get this outrageous building up but a conveniently placed cafe is beyond him, down the block for some pintxos, good view back to the museum with a wholly mundane street transformed at the end by the fish scale buildings and the giant flower puppy. Check out these outdoor works, a 12 foot tall jagged metal spider with a pouch underneath containing realistic looking eggs, better step back or be showered by newborn steel spiders, a bunch of colourful steel tulips, oh, they're balloons are they Mel, ha! It's called Tulips! A little Anish Kapoor taster, a column of silver balls, all reflecting the museum and river and each other in different ways, very cool and very susceptible to multiple photographs. Back in and up to Anish's floor, wish I could ditch the audioguide but definitely need it here. Room one has unusal sculptures in bright pigments, and a lump protruding from the wall like a pregnant belly that you can only see from the side, that's extraordinary, it vanishes when you're front on, Anish's commentary is no-nonsense too, good start, into the second room, numerous sculptures made of tubes of concrete, apparently all made using a machine that spews out the concrete based on architectural information provided by a computer, Anish himself is not even sure what this says, but I like it, don't know why, perhaps just for the effort it has taken to build them and get them in here. On we go, here are some oddly bent mirrors, in this one you are the right way up when close to it but as you walk backwards you seem to explode and them reassemble inverted, here is another long curved one, as you walk along it you appear to stay in the same spot while the room moves, again, impenetrable but somehow cool. Finally we're into the room where a cannon fires huge cylinders of wax into the corner, there's a terrible red sloppy mess there, here comes the bloke to set it off, better video this, shit, haven't got much time left on the memory card, will have to wait until the last possible moment, when will I know when it's going to fire, gas is moving, it's charging up, now, no, now? Click record, it's gone off, I missed seeing it because I was preoccupied with the camera, but FUCK! I've missed it on the camera as well, that's fucking brilliant that is, will they fire it again later? Bloody camera, stops you from actually looking at anything. Next, Robert Rauschenburg's Gluts, sculptures made of metal salvaged by the artist from dumps, not much to see here folks, he is commended in the audio guide for not having really done anything except rivet the random pieces of metal together and give them clever names, receiving acclaim for doing nothing, that's a nice trick, here's one with a working fairground scrolling light, that's okay, stick to semi-painted collages Rob. Finally, Henri Rousseau, here's a woman taking a walk but something else is happening, something sinister or uncertain, amazing when you just get the feeling instantaneously when looking at the piece, here are some jungle ones, he never saw a jungle eh audio guide, well, one can tell that just by looking at his jungle pictures, had he seen a jungle these would surely attract grave criticism. A couple of times the audio guide has mentioned how the figures in his paintings "appear to float" (she's right this time, unlike when referring to Rothko's rectangles), but this seems likely to be simply because Rousseau's home made technique is not good enough to paint a figure that actually appears to be standing on a surface. Here is "The Football Players", it's splendidly energetic, they're all floating, and that's Rousseau himself in the foreground eh audio lady? Well, that must be him in the background too because all the men pictured look exactly alike. That's that I guess, time to go home, relief and confusion, 13€ worth?! As we walk off we turn and look back, if there is to be a prize for best piece of art seen today the building wins (although that cannon was pretty fucking cool).