Whenever I travel, the main aim is shopping. I once came back from Chicago with a suitcase full of underwear (always buy pants in the States as they’re half the price) and a dining table from Pottery Barn that was carried by three men into the airport. The guy at the British Airways desk let me put it on the belt because he loved my answer to the question, “What’s in the box?” I told him: “A hat.”
I never go shopping in London, not even for a sock. I like to feel busy, and, for me, shopping means I am out of work. When I do a show, I ask to be bedecked in Armani, Dolce & Gabbana or Maria Grachvogel. They cut clothes for women with a human shape, rather than a stick insect’s. When I’m abroad I go into a state of full-frenzied purchasing till my ankles collapse, and I achieve a kind of euphoric high. So when I was offered a minibreak to shop in Barcelona, I leapt with joy and brought out the empty suitcases.
I love Barcelona. All hours are happy hours over there. The whole population is having a cocktail party in the streets day and night. No one looks miserable or on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unlike many people in London and almost everyone in New York.
There are no homeless as far as I can see, but huge numbers of people spray-paint themselves gold and stand frozen on a box as a human art form. Perhaps this is the “new look” for the homeless. Rather than lie down in blankets, they thought, why not go gold and stand in the position of the Statue of Liberty?
There were many gold people on the streets of the Ramblas, a wild and woolly area constipated with activity. Here, a gold Don Quixote in jerkin with spear erect; there a man with half a gold rowing boat somehow held up by his legs, clutching a gold mariner’s wheel while he, painted like a gold old sea captain, stands bravely with pipe (gold) in mouth and parrot (gold) on shoulder, reeling back and forth on his box (gold) to show the wildness of the sea below (imaginary). And it goes on; we’ve got gold matadors, ballerinas, space men and just crazy people.
But I had to tear myself away from the village of the gold people to roam El Born, an old Gothic area of Barcelona with cheekbone-squeezing cobbled streets. Every doorway holds a surprise. I creaked opened a heavy, 500-year-old door and was faced with a giant screen, which happened to be showing the work of performance artist and designer Mariaelena Roque.
It turns out I had wandered into the Institut de Cultura and proceeded to watch, on film, a man wearing what looked like a goldfish bowl on his head, complete with goldfish, a corset made of Brillo pads over a black spider web skirt (unidentifiable creatures were caught in the web) and a pony tail, by which I mean literally a pony’s tail, hanging from his behind to the floor. There was a second man connected to the first – the two had their tongues joined – wearing a very formal dress made of oranges, topped off with (what else?) bull horns.
The music was early abattoir with strings. Right next door is the Picasso Museum and I cannot tell you which museum is weirder. This one contains Picasso’s work from his formative years to his entry into the avant-garde. You see the genius of this man using a pencil and, without missing a beat, moving from bull’s head to woman’s flank to goat’s hoof to flute. His early work is fairly conservative and then, as he gains confidence, he lets it rip and suddenly we have a breast next to a nose and it works.
I have to say the layout of the museum is very much like Picasso’s later work in that nothing makes sense. How you go from room to room, from Blue Period to Cubism to finding the exit, is anyone’s guess.
