Madrid Museums

We spent the night in Madrid, and then headed to the museums first thing the next morning. Below is the outside of the Reina Sofia, which houses more modern art.

 When I say modern, I mean lots of that stuff that you look at and cannot for the life of you understand why it is famous. Take the above painting for example. I am pretty sure the artist's kids drew on the wall, and he cut it out and hung it in a museum. 

 We did get to see Picaso's Guernica, which was really neat. It took up a huge entire wall and had a room to itself! We also saw lots of works by Salvador Dali, but they are too vulgar and bizarre to post. 

 Afterwards we headed to the Prado, which is much more my style. The sheer amount of incredible and valuable art was overwhelming. 

This is Velazquez's Las Meninas, perhaps the most famous work we saw there. I remembered studying this in high school and I loved seeing it in real life. It is huge! I sometimes wonder what makes a specific work more significant than another. Everything Velazquez did was gorgeous. But for some inexplicable reason, after seeing this one, I can see that it has a special hold on people. Maybe it's the informality, the commonplace. Perhaps it's the fact that the artist boldly included himself in the picture of royalty. Whatever the case, I'm glad we saw it!