Río Guadalmedina

“When I paint, one of my greatest feelings of pleasure is the awareness that I am creating gold.” — Gustav Klimt.

The shuttle bus that was taking us from the ship into the heart of the city was passing the Centre Pompidou Cube when a poster caught my eye. It was promoting an exhibit featuring Gustav Klimt ... one of my favorite artists. He is probably best known for his “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” (featured in the wonderful Helen Mirren movie, The Woman in Gold) and another work simply known as “The Kiss” ... both painted during his “gold phase."

Entitled El Oro de Klimt (The Gold of Klimt), the exhibit promised an immersive experience. I had no idea what that meant, but we’re talking Klimt here ... how bad can it be?

In fact, it was terrific and well worth the detour that required walking back to the Cube ... and the admission of €9pp (senior rate). Turns out this is not an art exhibition in the sense that you look at paintings on a wall. Instead, you walk into a dark room, find a seat — either a bench or a comfy bean bag — and watch Klimt’s paintings come alive on the walls and floors all around the room ... with accompanying music. It was fantastic. I felt like I was inside the artist’s palette. I was so enthralled that I didn’t do a very good job with the videos ... I’ve included one of them anyway.

We were especially lucky with our timing as we had maybe 10-15 people in the entire salon ... unlike the next session that was filled with a couple of busloads of kids ... elementary school and younger!!!Read more