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Back in the Denise Scott Brown temporary exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, and this was another part of Learning from Las Vegas that immediately made some sort of sense to me, which is always something of a relief. Being honest, a lot of temporary exhibitions are far too niche for me, so this arrangement felt much more agreeable.

The idea is that Las Vegas developed a very particular architectural language because people were moving past buildings quickly, usually in cars, and needed to understand them at speed. And Las Vegas is hardly understated, not point in whispering what you’re about when a fifty foot sign will do.

The second part of the image is even better, showing a building that is itself the sign. This is where architecture gives up on subtlety entirely and decides that if the business is a duck, the building might as well be a duck. I like this clarity. And so Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour realised that there was a great logic to the Strip, the road was wide, the cars moved quickly and the signs did the work. Space, scale, speed and symbol all mattered, because this was a landscape designed to be read in motion. So there was a system in the chaos which is all rather pleasing as Las Vegas isn’t really a place that often asks if it might be overdoing things.

This artwork is Crak! by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), created in 1963/64, and is in his familiar Pop Art style, which is about my limit of knowledge here but I won’t let that stop me. I like artworks that come across as simple and neat, it gives me some sort of chance of understanding them.

The image originally came from a war comic, with Lichtenstein cropping and reshaping it into something sharper and more theatrical. I don’t know what the meaning behind this is meant to be, I’m guessing that war is made to look heroic and exciting, something that is somehow thrilling to be a part of. The artwork might be fun and cartoony, but the reality of war is something a little different. Or at least that’s what I think is the plan, I can’t imagine that this is a picture about violence.

For reasons that aren’t entirely obvious even to me as this is a very different image, but this all reminded me of this war poster at the Imperial War Museum which is riddled with emotional guilt. The artist Savile Lumley (1876-1960) later disassociated himself from the image.

They are very different works, but both seem to deal with the way war is presented to people. Lichtenstein’s image makes it look dramatic and exciting, while Lumley’s poster makes refusal look shameful and cowardly. One sells war through action, the other through guilt. Neither is really about the messy, frightening reality of conflict, but about the images and emotions used to make people respond to it. So perhaps that is why the connection made sense to me, eventually.

This is from the Denise Scott Brown temporary exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, and shows material connected with ‘Learning from Las Vegas, or Form Analysis as Design Research, the 1968 Yale School of Art and Architecture’ project that later helped lead to the famous 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas. I had thought that this exhibition all seemed a bit niche and hard work until I started to meander around it, especially as I’m fascinated with urban planning (ah, Sim City!) and the development of Las Vegas.

Rather than treating Las Vegas as an embarrassment to be ignored by serious architects, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour asked what could actually be learned from it. They studied signs, buildings, roads, parking lots and commercial symbols, looking at the city as it really existed rather than as architects might have preferred it to behave. And the evolution of Las Vegas is, if I’m being honest, a bit ridiculous and from a city planning perspective, rather sub-optimal. But, they wanted to create sense from the chaos, recording the signs that people saw as they walked down the strip, getting meaning from the clutter.

What I liked about this arrangement was that it turned something as supposedly ordinary as a commercial road into a proper object of study. The wider argument of Learning from Las Vegas was that buildings and cities communicate through signs and symbols, not just through form and structure. The plan asks the viewer to slow down and notice the language of a place that many people might dismiss as tacky, chaotic or too commercial and there’s something very useful about the whole slow travel element there.

I like a bit of urban analysis to keep me engaged and this plan is a snapshot of a Las Vegas long gone. It shows the sign of when Stardust was the world’s largest resort hotel, that casino was demolished decades ago and only a few of the resorts survive today. At least Circus Circus is still there……

More about this in other posts, but I was excited to see that I could cross this for around 85p, which I did (and there’s another video coming about that).

Bilbao-Abando railway station is the city’s main railway terminus and its history goes back to the arrival of the railway in the nineteenth century, with the station opening in 1863 as the terminus of the line from Tudela and becoming popularly known as the Estación del Norte because of the company that operated it. The present station is largely the result of a major 1948 rebuilding, which gave it a more monumental post-war appearance. The station, also known as Abando Indalecio Prieto and formerly as the Estación del Norte, sits near Plaza Circular and has the pleasing confidence of a station that knows it still matters.

There’s a bit of faded grandeur to the building, but it’s sizeable and things sort of function. It’s also connected to the metro network and it’s something of a transportation hub.

The most striking feature is the enormous stained-glass window inside the station, which depicts scenes connected with Bilbao and Biscayan life, including industry, fishing, sport, farmhouses, the Basilica of Begoña and the bridge of San Antón. It is a wonderful piece of civic storytelling, filling the station with colour and meaning in a way that makes most British railway concourses look as though they have given up emotionally. There is something rather lovely about arriving by train and being greeted not just by ticket barriers and someone eating crisps aggressively, but by a huge glowing summary of local history and identity. I very much like this, it’s got character.

It is not Bilbao’s most famous building, but it’s practical and it has a Carrefour which was very useful for stocking up on cold drinks to get me through the heat. Did I mention how hot it was?

I never did work out what this was. Art installation, memorial, or Renfe simply couldn’t be bothered moving some old sleepers.

This is a sculpture of Luis Briñas (1849-1938) who was born in Bilbao and became one of the city’s notable benefactors. He was closely associated with the Santa Casa de Misericordia (a Catholic charity which helped provide healthcare, pensions and financial support to the poor) serving for many years on its charitable board, and he made major donations to welfare and civic causes in the city.

It’s a rather odd looking thing with his eyes, but I quite like the combination of quirky, moustache and his look of moral seriousness. It is not especially showy, but it does its job which is a public reminder of someone whose money and public spirit had a lasting impact on Bilbao. And, not only that, but the city has named a road and a school after him, which I’d be quite pleased at.

This is the Craft Tabeerna which was well reviewed online and it appeared to be stocking some interesting craft beers. It looked promising from the outside, I like things that look on-trend and have the words “craft beer” visible.

It wasn’t the busiest, but there was a friendly welcome and it was clean and comfortable, although maybe slightly warmer than I would have ideally liked. Still, it was a pleasant place to sit and recover from Bilbao’s decision to be quite so enthusiastic about heat.

There were ten keg lines available and there was an interesting choice of beers to pick from. I decided I’d have two small beers, which was the sort of sensible and controlled plan that lasted for several minutes.

The first beer was the Peloton from Meta Edabeak, a small local brewery. The taste was lemony and it was slightly tart, but I thought that the flavours could have been a little more intense.

My second beer was the Malandarian from Malandar Brewing who are based in Cádi and this was punchy, hazy and full bodied for its 8% ABV.

I then realised that I had missed a collab with Funky Fluid, so I had to order the Suburbia which was a rather lovely hazy number that was refreshing, hay and decent.

The beer fridge was full of decadent delights and I was very pleased to see beers from Azvex, Funky Fluid and Nepo. But, I have had plenty of those beers in their native countries, namely the UK and Poland, so I wanted to try a beer from Malandar as they had several smoothie sours.

This is one of those beers where the can needs to be rolled and inverted, so here it is being prepared on the bar for me. I appreciate some people dislike smoothie sours, but those people are entitled to be wrong quietly elsewhere.

And this was worth the wait, it was creamy and thick, slightly sweet, had a flavour of blueberries and biscuits, with the whole arrangement being really rather decadent.

The food menu.

And some food items on the bar.

This bar did surprise and delight me, the range of beers was excellent and the can fridge was particularly well curated. The service was friendly, the surroundings were comfortable and the prices weren’t unreasonable for the beers, many of which had been imported. Definitely recommended and I’d pop in here again if I return to Bilbao.

This building was constructed in 1917 to be used as a bonded warehouse and was designed by Gregorio Ibarreche. Effectively it was a shed by the river, but a very grand one and there were ones of a similar design in London and Liverpool. A bonded warehouse was used for storing imported goods before customs duties had been paid and would have been central to the city’s trade.

There’s not a great deal else left of the building now as the heart of the port moved further away from this central stretch of the river and the former docks area became redundant. In Bilbao’s case, the Guggenheim Museum was built nearby as part of the area’s wider modernisation, transforming what had once been a working port landscape into one of the city’s most recognisable contemporary spaces.

The interior was demolished in the mid-1990s and although it’s a shame that the building has nearly entirely been lost, at least some survives.

I’m now fully engaged with my asking AI whether a modern artwork is by a professional artist or a child, and yet again, it has guessed that this was by a professional artist. And it’s by Alex Katz (1927-) who is an American artist best known for his bold, flat portraits and landscapes, often associated with Pop Art although his style developed before it became dominant. He has created thousands of artworks and this one was painted in oils in 2001 and entitled ‘Fishing Boats’.

AI is puzzled by the meaning of this one, noting:

“The meaning of the artwork seems to sit somewhere around light, perception and the way a simple image can become uncertain when reduced to its essential shapes.”

When pushed, AI declared that it was struggling to find meaning to this artwork, noting it can only suggest that it’s about how the artist wants the viewer to turn fragments of light into a landscape or object. I’m struggling to find any point to it as well and I can’t see these fishing boats. But, this loops back to a previous post I made at some point, asking if artworks actually have to have meaning.

We’ve reached the stage really where I’m asking AI whether I’m allowed to be confused. And on this one, it seems that I am and I reserve the right to prefer paintings where the boats have had the courtesy to turn up…..

Returning to my riveting series on whether AI thinks an artwork is by a child or professional, it’s adamant that this one was created by an artist. Asked about the meaning it’s going with:

“I’d say the meaning is probably somewhere around abundance, softness, bodies, craft, colour and maybe the boundary between sculpture and textile work. It has that modern-art confidence of being friendly and inviting at first, then gradually making you wonder whether you are looking at something joyful, biological, decorative, unsettling or all of those at once. In technical terms, it is doing a lot.“

It was created by Joana Vasconcelos (1971-) in 2011 and has the title Shoreditch. It’s made from wool, murano glass, polyester and wood. It seems that the piece is named after the vibrant part of London which used to contain my favourite bar (namely Goose Island), until the bloody thing shut. This means that it remains culturally significant, although perhaps not in the way intended by the artist.

I don’t know, I can’t see any point in it, but AI likes it and has found meaning. It’s going down the route that artworks have traditionally been painted by men and have been of grand sculptures and paintings, whereas this shows everyday materials can be used to create art and that has feminist undertones. And, it appears that AI is right, reading some magazine articles, this is exactly what the artist has been doing. This is why galleries can be difficult. You can think you are looking at something decorative and then suddenly it is interrogating the patriarchy. But there’s a perspective I wouldn’t have realised, so all really rather lovely.