Adam in Barca

I’ve gotten a bit backed up in my blog postings, busy traveling near Barcelona and getting immersed in the sensory overload that is Spain. But I’ll catch up soon.

Otherwise, I’ve been spending a lot of my time reading/writing in cafes, practicing Spanish, exploring the different barrios and parks that Barcelona has to offer, and doing some translating/research for Jose Ángel Valente. He was good friends with a few Catalan artists, like Antoni Tapies, an abstract painter who lived in Barcelona. They have a museum devoted to him here.

I found “A Moveable Feast” — Hemingway’s semi-fictionalized essays on his time as a young, poor writer in Paris — in a second-hand bookshop, and devoured that pretty quickly and enjoyed it (even though, as my fellow traveler Dan pointed out, many of the stories are of dubious factuality). Last week, I stumbled upon a series of small, mostly free, contemporary art museums near my neighborhood. There’s a new 3-floor modern art museum that rotates exhibitions (and is basically free for students). And then there is a small museum for Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet and artist. He’s well known for his “visual poems” which, after seeing them in person, I would say aren’t really “poems”—they’re just works of visual art that occasionally use language. That being said, they’re very playful and enjoyable. Some are mini-sculptures, and others are extended series of art prints.

Here’s one example, that I liked:

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