[Leica] IMG: Madrid, mostly art

[Jayanand Govindaraj]

Nice to see art that one is unlikely to see, at least in the near to medium
term!
Cheers
Jayanand

On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 10:39 AM Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> wrote:

> Last Friday I made the first trip away from Alicante since coming home
> from my last business trip in early March. I have long wanted to make
> another day trip to Madrid, alone, to visit art museums at my own pace and
> generally enjoy the big city for a few hours. So that’s what I did on
> Friday, the first day of my summer vacation. The logistics were simple: I
> took the high speed train AVE at 7 a.m., arriving in Madrid at 9:30, spent
> the day there, and took a 19:20 train back to Alicante in the evening. I
> started by visiting the Museo Reina Sofia, the main contemporary art museum
> in Madrid, which houses Picasso’s Guernica painting (no pics of that, as
> there is a prohibition against photography in that room, and there are
> several attendants to enforce it). I then took a walk in the magnificent
> Parque de Buen Retiro, Madrid’s equivalent of New York’s Central Park, and
> then went to the recently re-opened Museo del Prado to see (again) some of
> my own favourites from previous visits, including the Flemish masters,
> Hieronymous Bosch, the Spanish painters Veláquez, Goya, Murillo etc.
> In-between I visited another cultural icon, the bar El Brillante, and had
> an early lunch of their excellent version of one of Madrid’s signature
> sandwiches, the bocadillo de calamares. After the Prado I walked to the
> centre of the city (I walked everywhere; given the epidemic, I did not want
> to use Madrid’s metro to move around as I usually do), first Puerta del
> Sol, heart of the shopping district, and then Plaza Mayor, a large square
> containing Madrid’s old town hall and lined by bars and restaurants that
> usually making a roaring trade vastly overcharging the tourists for
> mediocre food. But not now. The plaza was virtually deserted, and had I
> wanted a table at one of the restaurants that were open for business (quite
> a few had not bothered to re-open) I would have had ample choice. The
> museums were also almost empty—they are only allowed to let in 1/3 of the
> usual maximum number of visitors, but do not even come close to that. This
> was nice for me, not that nice for the museums.
>
> The virus-control procedures are quite strict. It goes without saying that
> facemasks are compulsory everywhere; to enter the Prado you must submit to
> a temperature check and if you score 37.5C or above, you will not be
> admitted. I was slightly concerned because I had just spent an hour in the
> Retiro park, and the outside temperature was getting close to the afternoon
> high of 40C, but I need not have worried—my temperature was 36.5. At the
> Atocha train station where were gates through which passengers would pass,
> and the same rules applied—anybody with a temperature of over 37.5C would
> not be allowed to board the train. On the train, none of the usual services
> were available—the cafeteria car was closed, no free earphones or
> newspapers were distributed as is usually the case, and passengers were
> encouraged to stay in their seat throughout the journey and not to talk to
> other passengers. Obviously masks were worn by everyone throughout.
>
> Enough words. Here are the photos I took, many of the art works at the
> Reina Sofia, a musuem I have visited before but always together with
> someone else. This was the first time I really had time to explore it, and
> I was really astounded by the quality of Spanish painting in the postwar
> decades, when cultural life in this country was constrained by the Franco
> dictatorship—but this did not keep its artists from producing excellent
> work (I see some of the same when I visit Poland and look at art from
> Communist times—the censors were too stupid to catch some of the nuances of
> modern art; writers had it more difficult).
>
> So come for a Covid walk around Madrid, that looks familiar and yet very
> different from the city I am used to visiting:
>
> http://www.frozenlight.eu/madrid_july2020/ <
> http://www.frozenlight.eu/madrid_july2020/>
>
> Cheers,
> Nathan
>
> Nathan Wajsman
>
> Alicante, Spain
> http://www.frozenlight.eu <http://www.frozenlight.eu/>
> http:// <http://www.greatpix.eu/>www.greatpix.eu
> PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws <
> http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws>Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/ <
> http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/>
>
> Cycling: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator <
> http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/belgiangator>
>
> YNWA
>
> "I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right"
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