Hi, artists!
The other day we went to Caixaforum, where we saw two very interesting exhibitions: Tolouse-Lautrec and Velázquez.
In the first one, called "Tolouse-Lautrec i l'esperit de Montmartre" we had a guide who tried to emerge us inside the world of the posters and explained us a lot about the movement of the end of the XIXth century. And let's not going to forget about the cabarets! Specially one: the Chat Noir. The truth is that I was really happy to understand more about the Chat Noir because a friend of mine who also played the guitar bought once some strings that had the name of the Chat Noir and the image of it. It remained in my head until one day in History of Art they told me about it. What surprised me in the visit was to find out what the "cat" meant. INDEPENDENCY. ELEGANCE. The independency the artists who lived in Montmartre looked for, not obeying the standards of the Academy. It was the Bohemian life.
Posters took relevance in order to attract clients to the cabarets, but it was not considered an art as other artistic manifestations. Such as it happens today with the marketing somehow.
Why is not marketing considered an art? What is art? Those are questions we should done to ourselves.
Therefore, I think that the exposition was interesting because I learnt new things from an era I like a lot (I have watched Moulin Rouge more than once), but maybe it was because of the guide, I think I got confused in some parts. Maybe the exposition was done too fast. Anyway, I could learn more about Tolouse-Lautrec, who escaped from the canons established by the Academy and helped introducing, together with other artists, posters as an art, an art that could be seen by everybody and that explained the bohemian life.
After that, we went and visited Velázquez's exposition. In this one we did not have a guide, which maybe was a problem. In my case, as I studied History of Art I knew a little bit about him, but I would have liked to have more time. I spent so much time in each painting that the guard had to come and tell me that they were closing. I could not see the last ones. I was very excited because I knew that seven of Velázquez's paintings from El Prado were there and that is the maximum of paintings that are allowed to get out of El Prado. It was amazing to see the paintings I have studied during post-compulsory education. I did not know how the others felt, but for me it was amazing. The seven topics in which Velázquez portraits could be understood (mythology, religion, court...) could be appreciated. These different topics also were shown by paintings of other important painters. I really enjoyed identifying these different thematics and I enjoyed watching the mythology because I know almost all the stories and I could understand the symbolism (Marte can be identified as the god of the war because of all the weapons, for example).
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