Our visit to Museo d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) was quite interesting, don’t get me wrong.
The first floor exhibit on the philosophical tensions and attendant ramifications of the polarities between The Sovereign and The Beast (that is as far as I can go in verbal explanation after so much thinking while walking at the same time) was full of vivid material. Cool video art depicting the Minotaur, Venus, and Priapus, desacralized icons and generally shocking sculptures all kept me on edge for a full hour. But as soon as I stepped out of the exhibit hall, my legs buckled and thank God there was a mod beanbag chair there to catch me as I crumpled to the floor. I had to nap for half an hour. I was thoroughly sapped of energy. Gwen was able to revive me enough to stagger through the rest of the exhibits as cursorily as possible muttering to her over and over “This does nothing for me…”
I could not wait to get out of the door to go down an espresso across the plaza.
On to a city sponsored proletariat run art space which had a couple of good moments but already I felt so drained by my earlier conceptual art inocculation from earlier in the day that rallying was not an option. Conclusion: Conceptual artists? I can only spare you one hour of my brainjuice in any given museum setting. I shall do my best to stretch this span with practice over the course of this trip, but I make no promises: there are only so many political utopian claptrap art pieces I will suffer in the course of a tour day. Nuff said.
