Sunday, February 12, 2023 - Karen’s knee is not getting better quickly. The weather in Valencia is improving only slightly faster.
We’ve completely lost faith in weather forecasts here. The current temperatures given often seem wildly wrong. Today, for example, some sites were saying it was 14C, when it felt more like 7 or 8. And the days and days of rain we were threatened with, thankfully, haven’t materialized. The daily highs are edging back up into the mid-teens, and there’s been more sun than expected - all of which is of course good.
On Friday, I did a fast walk in the morning. After lunch/dinner, we headed down to Bancaja Foundation, the bank-funded art venue in the old city. By the time we’d walked there - a 30-minute hike - Karen was in considerable discomfort from her knee. She soldiered through, though. We looked at three separate exhibits. I don’t think either of us was really into it on this day, Karen because she was so uncomfortable, me because I was concerned about her. Which is too bad, because I think they were all interesting artists.
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| Jaume Plensa, Poetry of Silence |
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| Jaume Plensa, Poetry of Silence |
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| Jaume Plensa, Poetry of Silence |
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| Jaume Plensa, Poetry of Silence |
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| Jaume Plensa, Poetry of Silence |
As often at this gallery, it’s an ambitious and well-presented exhibit. Some of the work, I liked very much, other, not quite so much.
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| Joan Genovés, a rare early work with colour |
The second big exhibit, another retrospective, looked at the work of Joan Genovés, a Valencian painter who was working well before the end of the Franco era and who died a couple of years ago. His early work is very political. I found it oppressive - mostly monochrome oil and acrylic paintings of people being chased, brutalized, or lying, apparently dead or injured, in the street. A reflection, presumably, of the tenor of life under Franco in Valencia.
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| Joan Genovés, The Hug (El Abrazo) |
One of the works from his middle period became an icon of the transitional period in the country and the “reconciliation” after Franco died. It shows a group of people in the street hugging each other or running to join the hugging. They’re presumably celebrating the end of the dictatorship. It at least has a somewhat hopeful feeling to it, though he’s stuck with a monochrome colour scheme.
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| Joan Genovés, from the late period |
The later stuff continues to feature human figures, usually congregating, but it’s much lighter in tone. The pictures show aerial views of people milling about or moving towards something. He developed an interesting technique in which he built up the tiny figures of the people using clumped paint and sometimes bits of found material, then painted shadows to enhance the three-dimensional effect. It must have taken an enormous amount of time to complete each one - some are quite large canvases. They’re really relief sculptures in paint.
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| Joan Genovés, from the late period |
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| Joan Genovés, from the late period |
The last exhibit was about another Valencian artist - Pepe Gimeno: Dialogues Between Art and Design. There was little or no curatorial information, but I gather he’s a well-known and influential graphic designer in town, also of the boomer generation, who does “fine” art on the side. Some of it, again, I liked very much, some was just puzzling. I particularly liked the early collages featuring collections of stones, twigs and other found materials.
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| Pepe Gimeno |
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| Pepe Gimeno |
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| Pepe Gimeno |
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| Pepe Gimeno |
Karen insisted on walking home. I suggested the tube, but based on the advice of the doctors she saw 12 years ago, the first time she injured her knee, she thought it better to walk, if slowly. Which we did. And she took an extra-strength Tylenol when we got home.
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| Shot from our balcony |
On Saturday, I ran in the morning, a new route, a variation on my walking route: through Central Park, over the tracks, then into the anonymous modern streets of whatever that neighbourhood is called - don’t know, not particularly interested, it’s kind of ugly - and ended up running down Jesus, the street we stayed on a few years ago. I came out on Xativa, just down from the train station and ran back along my usual walking route.
Karen wasn’t up for a lot of walking, but did want to get out in the afternoon when it warmed up and the sun came out. So we walked over to Central Park with the idea of sitting in the sun and reading. I stupidly forgot to bring a book, so I established Karen on a nice sunny bench and wandered about taking pictures of foliage and flowers. There was a child’s birthday party going on nearby - one of a few we’ve seen in this park. This one appeared as if it might involve a community of Latin Amerians - there have in the past been lots living in Ruzafa. They had a piñata. I don’t think that’s a Spanish thing, but could be wrong.
The interlude ended when I stepped in a pile of fresh dog shit in my new boots. Seething with rage would be an appropriate description of my feelings. I scraped as much off as I could, but we headed home at that point to finish, or try to finish, the cleaning job.
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Karen was done for the day, but I wanted more time in the old city. I changed shoes, rode over to Carmen and wandered around trying to get lost - with only fleeting success. I did find some interesting new street art, though. And took the usual absurd number of grotty streetscape photos.
Today, we were scheduled to go to a free concert at the Botanical Gardens, at noon - a brass quintet. I had coaxed Karen into signing up for it as well, suggesting that she could always duck out of the concert if it bored her and look at the gardens. That wouldn’t have been possible, as it happens, because the auditorium where the concert was held was separate from the garden. In any case, Karen decided - I think wisely - that she didn’t want to risk making her knee worse for something that she wasn’t super-keen on to begin with. It would have been a 30-minute walk, or more - biking, she feels is out of the question.
So I ended up going on my own. I biked over. The Botanical Gardens, part of the University of Valencia, is a couple of blocks from the Torre del Quart, one of the two surviving mediaeval tower gates. It’s just into the Extramurs barrio, the neighbourhood that would have been just outside the old city walls. It’s a very modern complex, and the small auditorium is lovely with great acoustics and sightlines.
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| Torre del Quart from near Botanical Gardens |
The concert was…okay. Five middle-aged guys, each of whom holds down a first chair in the orchestra that employs them, all in Madrid. So they’re really talented instrumentalists. Two trumpets, a French horn, tuba and trombone. They call themselves the ABQ Quintet. The first couple of pieces were classical, or in the classical tradition. The rest of the program was modern, based on popular music forms. I thought some of it - like the ragtime they played - was kind of stilted and lacked, I don’t know, joy. They did get a little looser as they went on. But their choice of second encore was slightly ironic, an arrangement of “If you ain’t got the swing.” I wasn’t actually sure they did.
I walked back to the tower and a couple of streets into Carmen, taking pictures, then grabbed a bike and rode home. I love the towers - I think because they loom so forbiddingly over an otherwise fairly modern city, a stark reminder of the darker past. The pock marks in the masonry are supposedly scars from shelling by besieging forces during the Napoleonic wars. I probably photograph them, or try to, every time we come here - this time no exception.
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