I Miss Salty: Bilbao, the Guggenheim

Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum was one of my favorite parts of the city. I'm not usually a huge modern art fan, but the pieces of art in and around the museum were all really cool...well, there were still some that were a little strange, but they were cool at the same time.

The building itself and the bridge next to it are also really interestingly designed:

There's a little water lake-thing in front of the museum, which they occasionally filled with steam - I managed to catch it in this picture.

This statue was really cool. It's called "Tall Tree and the Eye" by Anish Kapoor - there was a special exhibit of Anish Kapoor's work in the museum that was ridiculously cool.

I really liked how you could see both the city and the other balls reflected slightly differently in the surface of each ball:

I don't know why they felt the need to have a giant spider outside the museum, but there you go...

Before Emily and I went inside, we walked around the little park next to the building:

And finally got a picture together that I didn't have to take myself:

On the other side of the building, Puppy guarded the entrance:

Puppy was made out of flowers and was supposed to be part of a temporary exhibit by Jeff Koons, but the city of Bilbao liked Puppy so much that they decided to keep him.

This is the actual entrance to the museum:

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum (which made me sad - Munich has spoiled me, because here I've been able to take pictures in just about every museum I've visited). Instead, I was able to find images online of a few of my favorite pieces of art that we saw.

Robert Rauschenberg's "Barge" - it was massive:

Andy Warhol's "One Hundred and Fifty Multicolored Marilyns" - again, massive:

Ynes Klein's "Large Blue Anthropometry":

I'm pretty sure that the method used for this painting involved women covered in blue paint, rolling around on the canvas according to the painter's instructions...strange, but interesting.

Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time" - a huge hall was filled with these giant steel structures and people were allowed to walk through the room and through the art:

I mentioned Anish Kapoor earlier (the artist who made "Tall Tree and The Eye"). An entire floor of the museum was dedicated to an exhibition of his work, and it was one of the best parts of the museum:

"Yellow"

From straight on, it looked like a painting, but if you went and looked at it from the side, it was really a giant recess in the wall, all painted yellow.

"My Red Homeland"

Also "My Red Homeland"

Basically, it was this giant mound of red wax that turned on a table and was shaped by the bar that's sticking into the middle of the table. The motor was out of order when we were there, so we didn't get to see it moving, but it was still pretty impressive.

"Shooting into the Corner"

The stacks of small barrels contained more red wax, which was literally shot out of the cannon into the corner. The museum shot the canon at least a couple times a day, so that the pile of was in the corner was constantly growing and changing. We hear the canon shot, but didn't actually get to see it fired.

The result of "Shooting into the Corner"

There were some other really interesting pieces by Anish Kapoor as well, but those were my favorites. Anyone who's interested can just google Anish Kapoor and his website has lots of pictures of his works. I was tempted to buy a book full of his work while we were at the museum, but it cost 50 Euros, so that didn't happen.

The last part of the museum self-guided audio tour took us back outside on the balcony, where I was able to take a few more pictures of my own. I don't know if we were technically "allowed" to take pictures, but no one caught us...

Jeff Koons's "Tulips" - another one of my favorite pieces, made out of really thin stainless steel, I think: