Picasso museum

On Friday we slept in late and went to the Picasso museum. It was really interesting. However, they wouldn't allow you to carry your backpack around. Since I had my camera with me, we didn't want to check it in the coat check so we took it out with the little backpack we carry it around in. The guy at the coat check tried to tell me that I had to wear something in front of me but I didn't understand what. When we approached the guy checking to make sure that you had purchased a ticket, he told us that I had to wear the backpack on my front, not as a backpack. I put in on that way to go up the flight of stairs and then carried it by its handle. Later John took it and wore it as a backpack. We never figured out why we were supposed to wear it backwards. I am not sure if they were afraid of pickpockets or people knocking into pictures because they weren't paying attention.

The museum was very interesting. We were able to see a lot of Picasso's early work and it was neat to see his progression into cubism. They didn't have a lot of the transition pieces, though. In one piece, Picasso had painted a person using some sharp lines but not quite cubist. He then seemed to go back to more "realistic" pieces. While looking at some of the cubist pieces, I couldn't help wonder how someone "decides" to paint using hard lines/shapes instead of the curves of reality. At one point, I asked John if Picasso had some break with reality. He said he was a genius and the first person to paint that way. I still think that it is a fine line between genius and detached from reality.

After the museum we went to the gift shop (of course). While walking in, I set off the alarms! The guard stopped me to inspect everything I had with me even though he knew that I was walking into the gift shop, not out. After he looked at everything, he noticed something in my coat. Apparently, clothes makers have stated putting little alarm things into clothing that you are supposed to remove when you buy them. I didn't know this and my coat had one of these. He then got scissors and cut it out for me while reprimanding me in Spanish (and probably saying how dumb I was). I didn't know and was quite embarrassed. Since it was my new Columbia jacket that has a zip out lining and I wore the outer shell, I will have to check the lining also (it may explain why I set off an alarm going into a store in Dublin).

We didn't see anything we wanted at the gift shop except for a couple postcards.