Slept late thanks to the sensory deprivation chamber that is my room (after everyone has finished slamming doors on their way to work that is). Sat in the park and let the world go by. Popped down to the beach and then dashed to the Picasso museum before it closed.
Very interesting to see his early work. I didn't realise he was academically trained. Very proficient from an extremely young age. Well-handled realistic portraits as a teenager. Lovely landscape studies on bits of wood. Can see why he changed style so many times and needed something fresh: the path he was on to begin with has been bottomed out. No matter how good you get at academical, realist painting it has all been done before.
After Picasso and all the movements I've learned about in The Shock of the New videos (the last of which I finished yesterday), is there any point in trying to find a new path in art? Is there any stone left unturned? I think not but I've still worked on my boring copy tonight, in a characteristically bloody minded and pointlessly unthinking way.
Had planned on visiting the Picasso museum today, but got waylayed by the Cathedral. Beautiful cloister with trees, fountains and thirteen geese. Planned on a place for dinner, waylayed by a pizzeria. Having plans and abandoning them is fun.
Drowning in the cacophony of lives I'm intersecting with. More so than in New York. So many people with heads full of thoughts and unknowable feelings and aspirations. Such a crowd, I never suspected they existed and yet they're all out there somewhere tonight. Too many, what are they all for? Seven billion and all with a little ceaselessly chattering voice in their heads. So loud but no one can hear anyone else's!
Walked around the Park Güell. Worked. Thought about the illusion that one works towards an end state. It never comes! All there is is change and transition.
Walking around Barcelona, sitting in the sun and contemplating.
Saw video of a Russian sable fur farm where the sable are madly jumping around their tiny cages in a frenzy of despair. Constantly moving, no escape and no change. Reminded me of an armadillo I saw in a zoo running around in a figure of eight, over and over again.
Compare our routines, repeated the world over.
Living normal life in a new city is a strange blend of the mundane and the periodic realization that you're sort of on holiday. Groceries, shopping, work but new sights and new environments.
Feeling of being manipulated by city planning. I have a small but noticeable revulsion to city blocks: everything is too similar, standardized and predictable. I can see why Gaudi went for the exact opposite in his architecture.
Endless reckless expenditure at cafes and restaurants. Waiting on an answer to my request to draw a beautiful Catalan. In the meantime, a Leonardo old man.
Barcelona with the boys. Madonna and child drawing wholly unrelated to the ice cream, drinks and pizza of the day. Tired of flights and trains and transport and waiting, glad I'm here for a while to explore slowly.
Long, busy, expensive, good day. Impressionism and modern garden exhibition at the Royal Academy, macbook purchase, lunch in Cambridge, silk carry-case making in Suffolk, work and rapid late night sketch. Up early tomorrow for Spain.