Submerged in Spain: Events in Marid within a nutshell

Several days ago, I explained the arrival in madrid; how being thrown into an new environment, and having my mind-scape and thoughts disrupted, forced me to find a way to adapt and conjure a positive attitude for my stay in the big city. On the first day, I met my expedition guides, whom I discovered became the dominant leaders, rather than the teachers. Davin, the male guide, stands 6 feet, with a relaxed posture, bowed legs, and typical spaniard features (burnt umber hair, and a patch of fur centered between his bottom lip and chin). He hails from Wyoming, grew up in Colorado, and taught Spanish at Boulder University, looking to achieve a PHD in Literature, he is rather intense from the information I gathered about him; he coached track, and is no stranger to skiing and rock climbing, unsurprisingly. I hope to share a road run with him at some point in the trip. Megan, stands about the same height as Davin, wears eyeglasses, has long brown curls on her head, and vaguely reminds me of a softer version of an Amazonian of the myths. She is big into cleaner eating, but still doesnt understand the ultimate dieting essentials, anyway, time for me to shut up about food. Thursday and Friday of the first week were the essence of the city for me, Thursday brought me to the Reina Sophia museum, while friday brought me to the world famous Prado and the Royal Palace of Madrid. I had lugged a gratuitous amount of gear with me upon the visit to the Reina Sophia, including my D40, tripod, 200mm telephoto lense, wide-angle lense, and my good old 70mm zoom lense. I made sure to pin my zippers shut, so my wallet couldn't be accessed by anybody but me. The Reina Sophia turned out to be a modern art museum, with nothing in the collection dating before Picasso I assumed, this museum was a fresh breath for my eyes; I remember my eyes watering with anticipation about seeing my first work of Picasso, coupled with a room of Dali's I hadnt seen. The structure if seen from the top would remind you of a picture frame, the entire establishment was a neat square. My favorite masterpiece in the collection was Dali's "The Great Masturbator", as usual, the painting depicts a single subject with several symbols, crawling over each other, or alienated from the main body of the painting, on Dali's landscape. Friday was possibly more important, the Prado held a collection of the Spanish and Flemish Masters I hadn't been familiar with, such as: Bosch, Velazquez, Goya, and El Greco. I was most excited about seeing Velasquez, a figure whom Dali himself had mentioned as being far more talented than himself, in a humorous interview. Dali can often make ridiculous and outlandish statements about himself, such as titling himself as "too intelligent to be a good painter". You always wonder what he definitely thought of himself or others around him, we do know that life was a big party to him. It was interesting to discover that Velazquez did not paint with a sketch or plan underneath, he corrected as he went, which is evident when you take a close look at "The Portrait of Phillip IV"; you can clearly see the outline of a third leg pointed outward, presumably where Velazquez changed his mind. The idea of painting over mistakes is something I had tried recently with acrylics, and something I deal with in Ink as well. The Spanish painters of this era were more impressionistic in their approaches than those of the Italian school. Goya displayed this clearly if you look closely at his work, details are only evident when you stand far away from the paintings. This idea of fast painting became very unattractive to me after a while. Of the small portion of the Prado's collection that I saw, Goya was most provocative to me, for his time, his paintings seemed like they would have bought him a death sentence. His work is vibrant, surreal, and chaotic, his juxtapositions in his tryptic work kept my attention longer than the works of the previous artists. Overall, Madrid, by its culture, was not a surprise for me, but it had plenty of jewels to offer.

"The Great Masturbator" by Dali