Madrid magic
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For years now I have nursed within me a great fantasy about the Mediterranean region encompassing Spain, South of France, Italy, Greece, Turkey – the so-called gateway between “East and West” and North Africa – specifically Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt.
Like most fantasies this one is fuelled by incorrigible romanticism, fed by fragmented, rose-tinted images descending thick and fast from travel brochures and magazines, books, movies and travelers tales. Visions of olive groves; orange scented, well laid out gardens, in European or Arabic style; beautiful white washed villas with over flowering window boxes; miles of sandy beaches; fast cars being driven smartly along picturesque, verdant mountain roads by Sophia Loren in those oversized sunglasses and that undersized dress; gorgeous old churches and mosques, beautiful palaces, museums and theatres surfeit with “history and culture,” good food, luscious fruit, great wines, and most of all, a balmy climate. And the amazing quality of light in these countries! That mellow, magical luminescence that the Impressionists strove to capture and indeed, succeeded.
I once briefly met a Turkish man who told me that the temperature range in his country was 10-25˚ C. Heaven, I sighed! I who have lived mostly through dripping, sweaty Mumbai summers, or that other variety of Indian summer – the blazing, hot and dry, continental killers. (In Mumbai, when it rains it pours.) I who now live in a city where minus 10˚C is the average winter temperature, and where these windy horrors last nearly half the year.
When I was in the Mediterranean, I would walk down the pebble stone path of an ancient city, my skin caressed by just that right amount of sunlight, a pleasing breeze teasing my hair, ever so lightly, while my eyes feasted on an architectural wonder. No gloves, no scarf, no layer upon layer of clothing, nor the constant effort to find shade, wipe a sweaty brow, quench a withering throat – would mar my triumphant journey of discovery, of what is surely one of the most live-able regions on the planet.
A dreary dawn
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Eight a.m., Madrid. It is pitch dark and misty. The streetlights are on. The sun is still fast asleep. Like me, it seems to be on holiday. I have flown in the night before from Ottawa and installed myself in the hotel from where the conducted tour I have booked myself on is to begin, a day later. Madrid lies before my eyes, pale and limp.
I swoon like a rejected heroine in an old Bollywood film, say like Madhubala in Mughal-E -Azam, after she is dumped into a dank prison, her love affair with the crown Prince having been exposed.
I had planned to start my Madrid tour with a picnic at the famous Retiro Park, described by the Lonely Planet guide as a one-time “preserve of kings, queens and their intimates.” But now I must change my plan and head directly for the even more famous Prado Museum.
Experienced Canadian friends have warned me that it would be cold and damp in Spain. It is December after all. But the meaning of their words failed to reach me; my head was firmly in the clouds. A romantic is essentially a delusional creature, spurning facts and mundane reality, s/he must cling to illusions at all cost, and rapidly build new ones as the old ones splinter and crash.
Some people I will later meet on my conducted tour of Spain, Portugal and Morocco, pronounced that Madrid is unremarkable. I for one don’t know what they are talking about. Here is a perfectly lively city, choc-a-bloc with old buildings, some stately, some beautiful and some just old; museums, bustling boulevards, cafes and nightlife. People stop and chat with each other right in the middle of a pavement. And besides, it houses the incomparable Prado. What more could one ask for?
Madrid has the reassuring familiarity of a Great City – a Mumbai, or a New York or a Toronto. A Paris. An Amsterdam, a Mexico City. I know how to get around these places; how to make the most of them. Yes, people in such cities don’t give a damn about you. And why should they? Big cities are not made for sentimentalists or shrinking violets. They are almost without exception brash, loud and uncaring. But also fun loving, party animals. Luckily I have a similar personality!
The Prado – an enchanted garden of art
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The Prado is a huge 18th century building, set a little back from the main road. It was built to house a natural history museum but ended up instead as Napoleon’s cavalry barracks for a while! Since 1819 it has been the repository of Spain’s considerable artistic wealth with a collection of 7000 European paintings. Less than half are actually on view at any given time. That still makes for a heck of a lot of paintings. No wonder I spent eight ecstatic hours here, gaping and at times gasping at the works of renowned Spanish artists like Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Murillo, Zurbaran, Cano and Ribera as well as the mind blowing work of Flemish artist Bosch (the Garden of Delight among others), Rubens, Van Dyck, besides Italian, German, French, British and Dutch artists.
I have been looking at paintings for many years now and reading up on art history a bit. I find it extremely rewarding and pleasurous to let my eye roam over a complex work of art and then, having taken in much of the detail, to look upon it as a whole. Or sometimes, the other way around.
Why is this rewarding? There are many reasons. Visual art allows for escape, as well as a sense of freedom and mystery that few other art forms seem to allow. Literature, theatre, film uses words, hence are inherently less mysterious and tantalizing, as compared to painting. The lack of words also makes escapism possible. As a writer I essentially deal in words and painting liberates me from this marketplace of language. Suddenly the mind is freed up to speculate, to puzzle, to admire and to immerse itself in the sensuous act of looking, wordlessly.
What about dance you may ask? Isn’t it another wordless wonder? Dance is fleeting, at least on stage, but the static quality of paintings and photographs means you can visit them again and again, to add newer levels of meaning and insight, which simply cannot be fully captured in words.
When I view old paintings, whether inside an ancient cave temple or in a modern museum, I feel I am directly in contact with another era of human existence, almost transported into it.
This is how some of our ancestors saw the world, I think. The world not just in the tangible, but in the exciting, harder to grasp realm of metaphor, symbol, myth, belief, legend. The paintings in the Prado are definitely not “realistic.” Even the landscapes are tying to create a world that is not ordinary, but mythical. They are trying to convey a point of view, a vision.
Themes recur. There are many variations on the birth of Christ, Madonna and Child, the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, the Holy Family and the Annunciation. (This is the Biblical incident of the Archangel Gabriel appearing before the Virgin Mary to tell her that, oops; she was going to be the unwed mom of Jesus!) There are of course the monarchs – the heavily bedecked kings, queens, their progeny, their courtiers, their servants, their pets, their horses, their over decorated mansions, their possessions, etc. The layperson also makes an occasional appearance, often engaged in a trade. Christ as a child is sometimes shown in humble surroundings with his parents.
There are also the various stories of the various Saints, some of whom seem to have visions, with angels for example, appearing before them, floating in the sky. Others are involved, one way or another, with “miracles.” There are splendid nudes, their flesh sparkling and spreading – obviously not on any kind of a diet, nor even contemplating one! Some of these ladies symbolize Faith or Justice or Mercy and others are muses, etc. One intriguing painting had a stream of milk coming from the Madonna’s exposed breast and falling into the mouth of a kneeling priest!
Whoa! I wondered what Freud and his followers would make of that? This is the kind of painting that makes one realize that indeed these works of art were made in a time very different from ours. This painting is not trying to titillate. It is perhaps a depiction of Mary as the universal mother? Only an art historian would know. This is yet another image one tucks away into the subconscious. It ferments there and will someday inform a deeper appreciation of some other painting.
The backdrops of these paintings are endlessly complex – whether the scenes they depict occur indoors or out. There is drapery, often lush and elaborate, all manner of flora and fauna, shafts of light, rivers and plateaus, windows, doors, richly furnished interiors, tools of a trade. These paintings are often populated by at least 3-5 figures and sometimes by vast numbers of people.
Here are paintings commissioned by Kings to mark important events, paintings glorifying themselves and their reign. Here are family portraits and battle scenes, victory marches along with visions straight out of hell.
Just a couple of hours into this stuff and I feel as if I am on LSD. Not that I have ever taken LSD but friends have kindly described the experience to me, not to mention countless authors who have also been obliging. At this point I enter the Bosch room. Man oh man, that guy was definitely on something pretty potent when he painted his ultimately weird and fascinating images!
On to Goya: Francisco Jose Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), described by the guide as the “most extensively represented of the Spanish masters at the Prado.” Goya was a Spanish court painter whose best work was done outside of his official duties. He is known for depicting scenes of violence, especially those prompted by the French invasion of Spain (1810-14). What is hard to believe is how modern Goya’s works look! No wonder he has been called “the first of the moderns.”
The Prado collection includes large paintings depicting surprisingly cheerful pastoral scenes also done by him, etchings of that eternally Spanish subject – the bull fight, famous works done during the French invasion and the most intriguing of all – the Black Paintings, executed on the walls of Goya’s house, done in his old age after he went deaf. These paintings convey his darkest visions like Saturn devouring his son – where a wild haired, demented looking giant holds a small, headless, body just below his gaping mouth, as he looks, unseeingly, at the viewer.
Used as I am to thinking of Spain and other Western European countries as conquering nations – the colonizers – the paintings done during the French invasion are a reminder that these countries also invaded each other. The history of these invasions, particularly the incursions Spain made into North Africa and vice versa, reverberate in the art and architecture of this region. The marriage of the two cultures has led to the Moorish
Style.
I leave the Prado marveling at the European imagination, wondering how and why they had managed to go from a vision of life, rife with symbolism, to their present efficiency driven, computerized reality, and find myself pitying them for their “hyper rationality.”
Dressed for X-mas…
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From the heights of the Prado I plunge into the depths of downtown Madrid – the Plaza Mayor. Oh how delightful is city planning in most European cities, which abound in beautiful and bustling “squares.” First I visit a Chocolateria in the vicinity, recommended by the Lonely Planet – certainly a very popular family hangout, where I dip strips of fried batter into a rather thin, and less than inspiring, chocolate sauce. Alas, my culinary experiences in Spain leave a lot to be desired. For my first meal out I order fried mushrooms dripping in oil and blasted with garlic (seemingly the only vegetarian item on the menu, save for a potato omelet which in hindsight would have been a better bet) and a chorizo (spicy sausage) sandwiched between two slices of dry bread. Not a good diet for a jet lagged stomach. Food here in general seems under spiced, and meaty, though I often eat hotel buffet dinners and breakfasts served up as part of my packaged tour, so it seems unfair to judge. However, I do recall a strong physical pang of regret the day we leave Morocco, arrive back in Spain, and line up for a sandwich in a small eatery. And though I heartily disapprove of Indian package tour companies who serve pure Indian vegetarian fare made with shuddh ghee, while traveling through whatever part of the world, I did long for an Indian food fix, that day. The other problem with the very lively eateries one encounters all over Spain is the volume of cigarette smoke they contain. Quite a shock after the smoke restricted pubs of Ottawa. All this brings home the fact that I have become, alas, a fussy, middle-aged, goody-two-shoes!
The chocolate does give me an energy boost, somewhat depleted after 6 hours at the Prado. I prowl the streets dazzled by the elaborate no holds barred X-mas lighting. I have seen nothing remotely like it in North America, which still has its puritan steak, despite its attempt at excess.
Suddenly, I am among a huge crowd of people – adults and children – some dressed up in masks and costumes, others handing out party hats, with a balloon seller or two thrown in. The crowd is facing what looks like a huge, toy store with a cutie-pie façade, comprising of cuckoo clocks in the shape of mini and merry toy houses. They are waiting for something to happen: some X-mas entertainment is to unfold. I can find no one who speaks English.
I duck into the toy store. Turns out to be a department store. I enter another shop. Downstairs they are mostly selling colourful Flamenco dresses in many sizes; upstairs there are costumes in a Halloween-like display. I notice one can dress up like Harry Potter or one of the characters in the series. When I come out the crowd is growing but no one has come on stage. So I decide to move on to a modern art museum called Reina Sophia.
This museum was open late and the entrance free. Here I see some great, modern works including mobiles made by Miro and Picasso’s Guernica. I also take in an exhibition titled Universo Gaudi. Antonio Gaudi is the brilliant Spanish architect (1852-1926) whose fantastic works I will be missing as the tour is not going to Barcelona – a city where the majority of the buildings he designed, stand. He is said to have freed “architecture from the laws of physics and defying gravity itself; his style is often described as a blend of neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau, but it also has surrealist and cubist elements.” I end my second day in Madrid with a hearty salad at a youthful pizzeria in the same square as the museum.
The Alhambra – a perfect vision of beauty
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Spain is an ancient battleground. The Romans have swept through it and left behind distinct landmarks – bridges, half ruined monuments. Many conquerors have come after, including the Arabs. The blend of Arab and Spanish styles gives rise to Moorish architecture.
In the ancient, walled city of Toledo, which I view through a grey misty haze, are narrow cobblestone lanes, lined with brick and stone houses, roofed with tiny wrought iron balconies, with openings, here and there, that present views of a swiftly flowing river.
(I never completed this travelogue, which, if I had, would have wound its way from Toledo, through the incomparable Alhambra, going from Spain into Morocco, re-crossing the sea to Portugal, entering Spain once again, to pass through the enchanting city of Salamanca. Perhaps another time…)