I know it's a cliche but I've always loved Barcelona. The first time I went was when I was at Art college during our first year we did a trip there and it was the first time really I had been to the continent as an adult. The thing I remember so clearly then was it was very dirty the buildings were all black with pollution, you couldn't walk down Las ramblas without holding onto you handbag and it was filled with strange smells, transvesites, menus you could read and crazy bars and nightclubs. However you could feel the culture and creativity just oozing from the people and the atmosphere was electric. I remember thinking "why is Belfast not like this" why does this kind of vibrancy exist here and not elsewhere.
Gaudi going to see his building I thought not "how did he think of it" but more how did he get someone to pay for his vision. You know you are aging when you have been back to a city so many times since that you have watched it's cathedral being built. It makes you think of times gone buy when cathedrals took a hundred years at least to build.
The second time I went was the year after it received the city of culture bid and the Olympics it was a changed city cleaned up , menus in English contemporary Art everywhere and many placed brought right into the 21 Century, however still lots of alleys and walkways to get lost in. in
Forward on 20 years (I realised this years I've graduated 20 years from Art college but that's another story) and I've been back many times since and each time I discover something new about the city and something new about myself. It's strange to look at something with the same eyes but a older more mature head. I remember the first time going to the Miro foundation I just didn't get it. I repeated the experience a couple of years ago and hay presto it all made sense to me.
What I love so much about Barcelona is their policy of supporting contemporary Art and they really know what contemporary Art is ...........................................there is no having to explain it.
I once went to a seminar in Belfast where they had a panel of people from the organisation linked to the government that oversaw Art and the policy decisions based around it. They had an enormous budget and were doing all sorts of amazing things. I asked the question did people have to lobby their politicians to get " contemporary Art" included as a policy decision or how did it come about. The guy said
" we are creative people we come form the land of Picasso , Miro , Gaudi we have creativity in our souls, the push came from the politicians"
It was at that point that my heart sang and I thought "we are scre***" if we have to rely on our politicians to push contemporary anything , let alone Art.
Yet it makes such a difference to an area, a place, a feeling, an emotion. At least they have stopped wingding about the spherical ball sculpture going in off the Donegall rd. But I'm sure it will start up again once it starts to get installed. It's not that we don't have Artists here that work in a contemporary way it's just that there is so little a market for them that they struggle to get themselves taken seriously. We only take contemporary Artists seriously in Belfast when they are not from here ..........................................anyway enough of my rant.
One nice contemporary commission I heard was there are a number of artists commissioned to make banners for around the cathedral quarter and the new market that is going in there not sure exactly where but Hill street is going to have some and all sorts of things are going to happen so. It's something small but it will be nice...............
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