A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 20 Nov 2018 - T for museum and giant spider

Good morning T-Party-Goers! 

I am joining the T-Party with a typical Spanish treat. Churros and hot chocolate. Here in Spain the chocolate is like a thick sauce. You dip the hot churro in it. If there is any left after you've eaten the churros, then you can spoon it out.

The text translates: "Good morning; come on, you lazy ones, the chocolate is getting cold!"

One of my postcards last week came from Singapore. It is a map card (which I like). 

Has anyone of you been to Singapore? (I haven't)

It was sent to me by Kay, who says she works for a shipping company, likes to travel and collect stamps and play badminton.

The stamp is very interesting. I can't quite make out what it represents but it looks like fishermen on a pier.

Now I'm taking you back to Bilbao:

There might be some information overload as there is so much to say about each building/structure, but if you are not interested, just skip those bits.

Here is a giant version of the Rooster of Barcelos. (Hubby posing underneath) We found it outside the Guggenheim museum.

We have a Portughese daughter-in-law, so we thought it fun to send her this photo.
The rooster of Barcelos is the most important identity icon of Portugal and is related to a medieval legend. 

One of the several versions of the legend has it that the inhabitants of Barcelos, a small town in the north of Portugal, were alarmed by an unpunished crime. A pilgrim, who was one day passing through Barcelos, was reported as the criminal to the judge. Despite claiming his innocence, the pilgrim was arrested and sentenced to the gallows. Before being hanged, he asked as a final wish to be taken to the judge who had condemned him. At the judge's house, who was about to carve a roast rooster, the pilgrim prayed and said: 'It is most certain that I am innocent as the rooster on the table will crow before the day ends!'. Everyone laughed, but for great astonishment, before the end of the day the rooster stood up and crowd. The judge ran to the gallows and released the poor innocent.

The rooster of Barcelos is nowadays the most popular piece of traditional Portuguese pottery. It represents honesty, integrity, trust and honour and is believed to bring luck and happiness.

 Beijing hosted the sculpture on March 2017 to celebrate the Year of the Fire Rooster of the Chinese calendar. In 2018, it travelled to Bilbao to be part of Joana Vasconcelos's solo exhibition I'm your Mirror at the Guggenheim Museum, from 29 June to 11 November.

And here it is, the Guggenheim Museum. Such a beautiful building. I have wanted to see  this for a long time. I took this picture from the bridge.

Wikipedia writes: The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. The museum was inaugurated on 18 October 1997 by King Juan Carlos I of Spain. Built alongside the Nervion River, it is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.

                                

Below is a close up. so you can see the material. It is titanium. Again quoting from Wikipedia:

Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time",while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium," its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales.

Outside the museum stands The Puppy by Jeff Koons.

Although it was October, the flowers were still beautiful. It must take some maintenance!

I searched for some info:

Since 1997, Jeff Koons’ monumental sculpture Puppy has stood sentinel before the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. More than 40 feet tall, the West Highland white terrier is carpeted with flowering plants, referencing the formal gardens of the 18th-century European elite while nodding to pop culture imagery and objects like Chia Pets.

Puppy is a permanent installation, but twice a year, in May and October, all of the plants that make up the sculpture’s exterior are replaced with fresh seasonal varieties, including pansies for the fall and winter, and begonias, impatiens, and petunias for the spring and summer. The museum recently undertook this complex job, which requires 20 people and 9 days to complete, and freshened up Puppy’s coat for the summer with approximately 38,000 new flowers in hues of red and pink.

This whimsical exterior also hides a clever feat of engineering. Anchored to a concrete base, a colossal stainless steel substructure is covered by a layer of turf, wire mesh, and geotextile fabric that secures the turf and stimulates plant growth. The structure also contains five levels of scaffolding and a network of pipes that water and feed the plants every 24 hours.

Walking along the side of the museum on the river side we came across this gigantic spider. Looks like it came straight out of 'War of the Worlds'.

It is called 'Maman', which is 'mom' or 'mummy' in French. The artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) is quoted to say: “The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestryrestoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.”  

Bourgeois' mother died when she was 21 years old.

Underneath is a sack of marble eggs. Although the spider is an unusual symbol for motherhood, I felt strangely protected when I stood underneath.

The bridge you see in the background is the La Salve bridge, but the red part is actually a sculpture called Arcos Rojos by Daniel Buren.
Although it is known as La Salve Bridge, its official name is the ‘Prince and Princess of Spain Bridge’. It is made of green concrete and was the first bridge in Spain to be built with the cable-stayed system and one of the few with a steel deck. It was built in the early 1970s to connect the heart of the city with the suburbs, and now it also links up with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In fact, on the tenth anniversary of the Museum, a great red gate by the French artist Daniel Buren  was opened on the bridge.

A little further we found this foot bridge called the Zubizuri bridge, a work by the architect Santiago Calatrava. It is a white arched structure which symbolises a sailing boat in the estuary. I liked it a lot and we walked across it several times and I took pictures from all directions. A fascinating structure, and intensely beautiful.

I think this is more than enough for today. Well done if you are still with me. I think our day in Bilbao was the most interesting and exciting day of my holiday. I can recommend it to everyone.

Have a great T-Day all,

Lisca