Making Time for Guggenheim

Entering the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is sort of like entering an amusement park, if you time it right.  The rear facade, which faces the river, has both a Fire Fountain (Yves Klein, 1961) and a Fog Sculpture (Fujiko Nakaya, 1998) that operate at different times and provide a rather surreal experience as you walk across a bridge.  Across the green-tinted pool, the giant glittering balls of Anish Kapoor's "Tall Tree and the Eye"
(the balls are supposed to be like eyes, reflecting what they see)
glisten in the morning sunlight while the garish Tulips (Jeff Koons)

glint like oversized Christmas tree ornaments.  Like I said, surreal.  And then, of course, there is the building itself.  Undulating sheets of titanium, layered like fish scales and building in undulating petals outward like an colossal almost-blooming flower forever stuck in a state of indecision.

 (Stolen from Wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Guggenheim_Bilbao_may-2006.jpg)

The design of the museum required advanced new techniques and a whole lot of computer calculations.  Indeed, quite a few pieces in the museum also required advanced computer technology and could not have been made without it.
I arrived at the museum just after it opened (since it's the only museum in Bilbao that's open on Mondays - and then only during the summer - I figured the line would be long) but didn't have to wait more than five minutes in line.  On the other hand, I was happy to have arrived early because I got on the list for the 11 AM tour.  Contrary to the information in my guidebook, these tours were only in Spanish.  At this point, though, I'm quite used to tours in Spanish and boldly signed up anyway, my lack of Spanish architecture vocabulary be damned.
The tours given at the Guggenheim fill up very quickly (get there more than 30 minutes before, as a line forms for the opening of the sign-ups 30 minutes before the tour) but are not full tours of the museum.  That, of course, would require hours.  Instead, the tour touches upon a few key pieces and themes of each floor and provides a foundation for viewing the remainder of the collections.  It was an interesting approach but it worked very well.
Oh, and by the way: no photos allowed inside.  Photos of the architecture are allowed, but of the pieces, no. That said, everyone was taking photos except for the few minutes after they'd been scolded by a staff member (itself an irregular occurrence).

A view up the atrium, which is the central tower of the building in the pictures above.

A view down from the top floor of the same atrium.

The squares are where the Fire Fountain leaps up, while the Red Arches (Daniel Buren, 2007) are another art installation meant to integrate the bridge with the structure of the museum.  The tower next to the red arch of the bridge also integrated the bridge into the structure.  Also note a giant spider, Maman (Mother) by french artist Louise Bourgeois.  Her mother was a weaver, and she used a spider to represent motherhood because mothers weave a web that keeps the family together, providing protection or entrapping, menacing and yet fragile.  Apparently her family relations were complex.

 Around the front entrance of the museum is Jeff Koons' Puppy, a giant West Highland Terrier (or Westie) covered in flowers.  Puppy was intended to be a temporary piece, but the citizens of Bilbao (and the millions of visitors) fell in love with him, so Puppy has stayed.

Isn't his little nose cute?

Walking to and from the museum, I recommend crossing this white pedestrian bridge (Zubizuri) over the Nervion River just before the museum.

And now a bit about the museum's collections.  The pieces, taken from the Solomon R Guggenheim and Peggy Guggenheim Foundation collections, rotate between the various Guggenheim museums, so it's hard to say what will be where, when.  Currently, the Guggenheim Bilbao is also pairing up with the MACBA (modern art museum in Barcelona) and El Prado for an exhibit called Inverted Mirror.  Basically, there are always some great new things to see.
In terms of the permanent collection, there are several gems (beside the outdoor installations).  Probably my favorite piece in the entire museum was Frank Serra's The Matter of Time.  Using torqued elipses and various types of steel, he creates an enormous labyrinth of emotion.  Using simple, undulating shapes, he creates mazes that challenge your notions of space, create claustrophobia, inspire an illusion of weightlessness.  Listening to him speak on the audioguide (they had quite a few artists speak about their own work) reminded me why I love being a nerd.  Serra is brilliant; he uses complex geometry to create a simple but very evocative masterpiece.

 (Stolen from: http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/serrabilbao_jun_05.jpg)

Also check out Jenny Holzer's LEDs as they broadcast AIDS poetry on one side and the formerly forbidden Euskara on the back, Richard Long's Bilbao Circle made of slate,  Vanessa Beecroft's Black Madonna with Twins (she has a similar one of her, a white Italian lady, breastfeeding two Sudanese twins), and Francesc Abad's Counting and Numbering the Freckles of a Part of the Arm by Assistants, among others.
There's currently a huge installation of Hockney's landscapes using neon colors or his photo collages (for West Coast lovers, California inspired his characteristic style that made him famous).

(Pearblossom Highway by Hockney, photo from: http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art105/img/hockney_pearblossom.jpg)

(from: http://www.luxq.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/3803657952_22ea3c72141.jpg)

Fun facts about the Guggenheim Bilbao and some of its artists:

• Sigmar Polker would mix arsenic, lavender, and meteor dust into his paint
• There's a series where an artist (Gillian Wearing) photographs herself dressed up as all her different family members, from her brother to her grandmother
• Christian Boltasnki says, "Our faces are collages of the dead"
• Hockney has a series of 51 drawings he made on his iPad (I swear, the man is a walking iPad advertisement)
• Go into every exhibit asking how it utilizes perspective and how its meant to change yours

Spotted: Industrial Bilbao, still hiding.  On my run this morning, I followed the river for quite a while and was transported out of Tourist Bilbao back into good old Industrial Bilbao.  It's still there, with spider crab-like rusting iron claws knuckled down on the edge of the river and a few broken windows in the factories.  If you decide to explore, just know that once you get out of Tourist Bilbao, there are no more pedestrian bridges to cross the river.