Engineer's Daughter

barcelona pics

It's a very photogenic city, that Barcelona, and I saw minimum 10,000 tourists wandering around with cameras slung 'round their necks out to capture every square inch of it.  I did my best to contribute, and you can see my set of photos from the last week right over here.  Please enjoy!

barcelona 2009

Saturday
-mental soundtrack ---> Rogue Wave
-sharing a gate with a flight to Amsterdam = eavesdropping in Dutch
-sick on vacation sucks but whoa Nyquil knocks you out good when you want to sleep on the plane

Sunday
-mental soundtrack ---> Beirut
-glimpses of the Thames and the London skyline out my plane window
-as airport eating goes you can do a lot worse than the Chez Gérard at Heathrow
-flying over the Pyrenees
-the super-stylin' Market Hotel
-dinner in their excellent restaurant: a glass of cava + cod topped with pear-garlic sauce on tomato preserve + crema catalana
-a post-dinner ramble around my adopted neighborhood for the week

Monday
-mental soundtrack ---> Belle & Sebastian
-breakfast near the Plaça de Catalunya
-soothing my jet-lagged brain with mounds of modernisme in L'Eixample: gorgeous facades, intricate ironwork, sinuous lines galore
-then I saw La Sagrada Familia in person for the first time and my head exploded
-skipped the 90-minute queue for the lifts up into the towers and instead ogled the workers doing the ongoing construction
-tasty menú del día at L'Atzavara: chickpea and couscous stew + zucchini stuffed with marinated tofu + fresh fruit for dessert
-undulating interiors, parabolic arches, and the crazy chimney pots of Gaudi's La Padrera
-more hallucinatory wonders from Gaudi down the street at Casa Batlló, including its mosaic-encrusted exterior and dragon-backed roof
-the cute young skater-boys of Plaça de la Universitat
-dinner at the comfortably hippie Amaltea: mango lassi + veggie bioplato + veggieburger + apple compote with cinnamon for dessert

Tuesday
-mental soundtrack ---> Freedy Johnston
-quickly developing an addiction to ensaïmada pastries
-my Metro card getting me onto the funicular railway to Montjuïc
-the wild parrots of Montjuïc
-scenic cable car ride up to the castle on top of the hill
-the many fine views and gardens of Montjuïc: I found a clan of nice feral kitties, was scolded in Catalan for gawping at a quartet of martial arts practitioners, and encountered many many Spanish schoolchildren
-1000 amazing years of art at Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, everything from reconstructions of Romanesque churches to one of Picasso's better portraits of Marie-Thérèse
-an artful lunch overlooking the entire city at Oleum: grilled vegetables + hake supreme with basil-butter sauce and tomato compote with baby shrimps + mango and mint timbale with parmesan ice cream and hot chocolate sauce
-a ramble through the just-this-side-of-sketchy El Raval including more Modernista goodness at Bar Muy Buenas and London Bar, plus street art, skate shops, cool galleries, and a seriously international mix of residents
-the Museu Maritim was undergoing renovations but I still got in to marvel at the cavernous medieval shipyards
-meeting up with Tom to head over to the {ths} opening at ROJO®artspace
-Tom's spectacular photographs on display at Noti
-hole-in-the-wall pizzas and postres at Pizzas l'Avia
-late-night gin-and-tonic at Marmalade

Wednesday
-mental soundtrack ---> Andrew Bird
-total shopping mayhem in La Ribera, including a pile of Catalan 7-inches from Discos Juandó and tons of edible presents
-hushed churchly awe inside Gothic beauty Santa María del Mar
-early work, delicious little prints, and crazy ceramics inside the linked buildings of Museu Picasso
-pintxos and a café amb llet inside the foyer of the Palau de la Música Catalana
-the Palau itself, designed in full-on extravagant Modernista style by Lluís Domènech i Montaner complete with its glowing sun of a stained glass skylight
-one of the best meals I've ever had in my life at Suite 7 in El Raval: vermouth + grilled shrimp with mustard dipping sauce + greens with croutons and sesame-balsamic dressing + a glass of Spanish red + vegetable timbale with goat cheese and tomato and basil pestos + anise liqueur + pannacotta with honey
-a deadly vodka and orange juice back at Bar Rosso, my hotel bar

Thursday
-mental soundtrack ---> Air
-yup, still eating my weight in ensaïmadas every morning
-the continuing gorgeous weather sent me straight to the sea, namely around the old fishing port and along the beach of Port Vell and La Barceloneta
-stopped off at the excellent L'Aquarium and completely freaked out over their underwater shark tunnel, but also their penguins and amphibians and sea dragons and iguanas and Mediterranean fishies and and and
-investigating the architecture (and parks and beaches) of the new Barcelona on a walk along the coast from El Fòrum through El Poblenou to Port Olímpic
-high-power lunch on the pier at El Cangrejo Loco: typical Spanish lettuce salad with olive oil and vinegar + fried calamari + salt cod with anchovy "aioli" + Macedonian-style fruit salad
-the simple perfection of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, red curtain and all
-too much good stuff at MACBA: Gego + Smithson + Matta-Clark + Weiner + Ruscha + the John Cage exhibit that was worth the trip to Barcelona right there
-oh hello White Paintings, very nice to see you so far from SFMOMA
-hoity-toity art types at the Carles Congost opening at Galería Joan Prats
-mulling over ideas over dinner at Flamant: caprese salad + vino tinto + tagliatelle with asparagus, mushrooms, goat cheese + chocolate mousse topped with crushed pistachios

Friday
-mental soundtrack ---> Yo La Tengo
-meeting up with Angela at the La Chula production studios, aka the former bar her sister Alicia and Alicia's partner Benet converted into an awesome live-work space that they are now sharing with the 7-month-old Otto
-mind summarily blown by the excavated Roman villa in the basement of the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat
-seeking out some of the hidden treasures of the Barri Gòtic, including the kitties living in little cat-houses by the old Roman tombs in Plaça de la Vila de Madrid and the former Picasso hang-out El Quatre Gats
-back to La Chula for a homemade lunch of tuna stew + tomato salad
-window-shopping vintage stores in El Raval and digging through vinyl at the amazing WAH WAH
-dressing up to drink a couple glasses of cava at Bar Rosso
-last night in Barcelona means a fancy dinner with Angela, Alicia, Tom, and Otto at my hotel: tempura shrimp wrapped in zucchini + grilled calamari with beans and a lemon balsamic sauce + molten chocolate cake
-mas cervezas in the bar

Saturday
-mental soundtrack ---> Sigur Rós
-one last ensaïmada at the BCN airport
-the best part about Heathrow's new Terminal 5, even better than the ubercool forward-thinking design?  it has a Wagamama
-"...you look very happy today, madame!"

in the na

A trio of nice things from this week:

• Richard Avedon at SFMOMA with Rinchen, complete with a honey-pistachio parfait in the rooftop sculpture garden.
• Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law at home on a sick day.  "It is a sad and beautiful world."
• The Hidden Cameras, who make my heart ache in the best possible way.

And the nicest thing of all?  Tomorrow I get on a plane to Barcelona and don't come back for a week.  I will see you on the other side.

hot song

In retrospect I probably should have stayed in Monday night and nursed what I now realize was a rapidly-developing cold, but I would have been so sad if I had missed out on the music at 21 Grand that night.  Brooklyn's female avant-garde noise rock duo Talk Normal played a fantastic set, screwdriver wedged into guitar frets and contact mics on the drum kit and all.  Shawn Reed of Racoo-oo-oon joined Ryan Garbes to make some good raucous sounds as Wet Hair, and LA pair Protect Me were fun as well.  But most of all I was glad I got there early to hear the live debut of Wheel, Erika Anderson's new project with her sister, which started out with their cover of the Breeders' "Iris" and then wended a path from grunge all the way to more abstract noise over the course of their set.  Erika is amazing and I will listen to absolutely anything she does.

convoke

Skeleton of a Butler, Pompeii c. 200 BC.  Some day I'll finally make it to Italy, but this year I've chosen Spain for my big Thanksgiving-week trip, Barcelona specifically.  They of course have a few Roman remnants there as well, and you can bet I'll be checking them out along with all the art, architecture, and food I can handle.  I just have to make it through the rest of this work week (and get over this low-level illness that's plaguing me) and then I'm golden.

minimal/maximal

Though the idea of artists working in collaboration is certainly nothing new, it does seem to be something of a theme in my life lately.  The Headlands Center whether through coincidence or conspiracy has not one but two artist duos in residency right now: Italian transplants Isola & Norzi and then Brooklynites Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua.  Both pairs build installations, but their work is wildly different.  Isola & Norzi take on the "white box" of the gallery by creating deceptively simple meditations within the space, such as dust patterns on the floor or a window carved into a wall, that nevertheless have significant impact.  Bua and Bercowetz also create work that engages directly with the space they are given, but their imaginative constructions almost seem to tap directly into the artists' subconscious as they throw in literally everything but the kitchen sink.  A list of materials from their 2005 piece Braggin' Rites (The Largest Bowie Knife) includes "wood, metal, paper, Styrofoam refrigerator, Cushman, sound, electronics, light, candles, tomatoes, water pumps, paint, Plexiglass, effects pedals, blenders." 

On Sunday afternoon, after brief presentations about their work and a panel discussion that included details about how each pair met (Isola & Norzi on a container ship, Bercowetz and Bua while working for an art moving company), the artists opened their studios for us visitors to poke around in.  Bercowetz and Bua are currently in the Center's Project Space which means you can pop in on them during set hours and see what they're up to throughout their time at the Headlands, and I highly recommend making the trip out there before December 3 because oh boy have they been building.  Over a dozen of Bua's marvelous chairs, crafted out of wood he salvaged after that big storm we had near the end of October, are arranged around the perimeter of the room, while the center is filled with a hut, tables, and other sculptures of various functionalities.  We were invited to make ourselves comfortable on the chairs, and I settled myself onto the lower level of a two-story special while Bua vaulted onto the platform seat above my head and then grinned down at me.  Things were a little more sedate over in Isola & Norzi's studio, where a few minimalist maritime sculptures and paintings of underwater landscapes are currently serving as inspiration for their upcoming spring 2010 exhibition at the Coney Island aquarium, a show itself inspired by Jacques Cousteau and his attempts to build an underwater colony in the 1960s.  I'd love to see what Isola & Norzi end up doing, especially because they mentioned the possibility of aquariums within aquariums, but I would also adore it if the Headlands kept some of Bercowetz's and Bua's pieces around after their residency is up.  Especially those chairs.

picturing childhood

Castle in the Air was already one of the more awesome stores along Berkeley's 4th Street shopping district, chock full of all manner of Victoriana-inspired knick-knacks and other desirables, and now they've gone and launched a promising new art gallery on their second floor.  Their inaugural show is called Picturing Childhood: Portraits from the Masters of Early Photography (1850-1930) and pulls from the Wolffe Nadoolman Collection, a private holding that has never been publicly displayed before now.  The photos on display range from anonymous daguerrotypes of young siblings in matching outfits to Carl Moon's photos of Native American children, from Julia Margaret Cameron's pre-Raphaelite fantasias to Lewis Carroll's luminous study of Xie Kitchin, pictured here.  They're all rare and wonderful images, but I think my favorite was Jessie Tarbox Beale's picture Physically Defective Children, taken in 1910.  In it three children with their arms draped around each other smile directly into the camera, displaying none of their supposed physical defects, and the spontaneous nature of the photo nicely presages later street photography.  The show closes on Wednesday so rush on down there, and maybe pick up some holiday decorations or a lovely bottle of ink and a fountain pen for your letter-writing needs while you're in the store.

once i was a cannibal

David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro's 2000 documentary Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale is a fascinating glimpse of the life of painter and accidental anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum who spent time as an adult living amongst native tribes in both Peru and New Guinea.  And yes, one time he did eat human flesh.  Schneebaum is probably the most unlikely of adventurers, a gay, longtime New Yorker with a gentle disposition, but he speaks of an early experience of seeing a "wild man" from Borneo at Coney Island when he was young that triggered his interest in so-called primitive cultures.  The filmmakers ask him to return to New Guinea and then to Peru, and though he is quite vocal about his reluctance to go in each case the journeys yield some rich and wonderful surprises.  The Shapiros mix in archival footage from Schneebaum's past talk show appearances in which he calmly and candidly speaks about his provocative experiences, and combined with the modern-day sequences that sometimes do genuinely look as if they were shot on the fly while tramping through the jungle (go figure) the documentarians ably convey the complexity of Schneebaum's relationship to his past.  As a postscript to the film, Schneebaum died in 2005, but his extensive collection of shields from New Guinea are now at the Met in NYC and his personal papers in the Jean-Nickolaus Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota.

the mooch

Maybe it's because my brother took up the clarinet back in grade school (at the same time that I was learning the flute) that I have such a weakness for clarinet quartets like Edmund Welles and Beth Custer's Clarinet Thing.  Or maybe it's because they just rule.  Clarinet Thing has just released their second CD Cry, Want, and previewing my new copy this morning made me wish I still had my DJ shift it's so perfect for early Sunday listening.  The group performs on every woodwind in the clarinet family and uses no amplification whatsoever, so all you get is the beautiful tones.  On Cry, Want they range freely from arrangements of classic jazz tunes like Herbie Nichols's "2300 Skidoo" and Thelonious Monk's fabulous "Crepuscule with Nellie" to more modern and experimental music, some of it written by the other quartet members Sheldon Brown, Harvey Wainapel, and Ben Goldberg.  Tomorrow night Yoshi's San Francisco will be hosting the Cry, Want CD release party and Clarinet Thing will of course be performing, so for those who prefer that side of the Bay that's my recommendation for your Monday night.  I will actually be back at 21 Grand myself, but more on that later.

witch tricks

Last time I saw the Pittsburgh/San Diego duo Extreme Animals it was a delicious brain-melter of a show several months ago at Lobot with one of my local favorites Nero's Day At Disneyland, and they were back together and threatening to induce seizures again at 21 Grand tonight.  There was another gorgeous screenprint by Paul Morgan to commemorate the occasion, Oakland band Deep Teens (composed of peeps from Membership and Stress Ape) opened with an impressive set that was reportedly their first performance, and DJ Kyle Mabson played tweaked-out dance hits in between acts.  I was definitely in the mood for the loud and aggro.  Cleared out some cobwebs.