Madrid's Trio of Museums

Can you tell I'm terribly behind on my travel blogs and trying to
catch up?

Carol and I had just one full day in Madrid before she flew home. We
made the most of it.

We visited three museums:
- Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (We opted just for the temporary Matisse
exhibit; all these museums cost a pretty penny. It was filled with
reclining women, colorful rooms with windows open to the sea, flowers
in vases, violin cases. I liked the sculptures best, human forms with
bent knees and arms in tense positions. I felt like there was energy;
the paintings just made his subjects look like bored, complacent
women. Carol, kinder and more generous than me, said she thought they
looked as though they were on vacation.)

- Museo Nacional del Prado, a never-ending series of rooms that
reminded me of D.C.'s National Gallery of Art (Rick Steves claims it's
the best art museum in Europe; perhaps in volume, but not in my
delight... I'll take a hall of Miro or Picasso works over a football
field of stuffy oil portraits and lurking angels every time.) The
section of Goya's Black Paintings was horrific, draining, distressing.

- Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia - the city's modern art
museum, aka the first place I'm running to next time I'm in Madrid. It
includes Picasso's famous "Guernica," an immense black/white/gray
painting depicting the horror of Franco's attack on the city of
Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Plus, a respectable amount of
Picasso and Miro, hurray!

I didn't expect this trip to be so arty.

But I love that it has been.

I've never paid for an audioguide before, but a good one, it turns
out, transforms your entire experience. You learn the story of the
artist, the shape of his career and the meanings of his major works. I
started to finally notice themes, patterns. Knowing what was going on
in an artist's personal life and in history helped make sense of the
phases.

The context made the art stick.

I am now smitten with Juan Miro. When I saw one of his sculptures in
the garden in Madrid's Reina Sofia, I ran to it, knowing before I read
any plaque that it was his and, more specifically, that it was his
Moon Bird. It was like seeing a cherished friend unexpectedly.

I've never felt like this about art before.