Postcard From Madrid ... By MOLNAR

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 5

Postcard From Madrid ... By MOLNAR

J IKE long-distance swimmers reaching the reassuring shore, visitors at the Prado emerge from many stairways into the restaurant. Tired, but feeling virtuous—a task ac-, complished, an experience lived through—we are in a safe world of everyday objects, needs and noises. Art still lingers on. but the marble statues that stand around have the immobility of waiters urgently needed, and the enormous gilded frames of Flemish still-lifes contain decorously displayed objects, all eatable. The sharp light from both ends of the room turns us into undefined silhouettes. Features dissolve, forms are unrecognisable. We are a dirtg old picture, in urgent need of cleaning. To the accompaniment of a bottle of wine we assess our loot. Rembrandt, Rubens, Velasquez. Goya, El Greco; they are ticked off like a shopping list. We are in the presence of the great, not quite a nodding, more a blinking acquaintance. The fault was not entirely ours. The Spaniards have a strange attitude to art. They collect, display and preserve. The accent is on preservation. As long as pictures are not exposed to | tight, colours cannot fade. This is accomplished by keeping rooms in utter gloom. Pictures exist more by their smell than by their visual impact “Take a deep breath, dear. Inhale this Van Dyck.' A new art appreciation.

It is true that a few galleries at the Prado are well lit, but for whom! Goya's etchings are displayed for the enjoyment of myopic dwarfs. Minority rights can be taken too far. Spain is criticised for not giving proper recognition to her modern world-famous painters. This is not so. In the Museum of Modern Art. where we moved around calling to each other so as not to lose our way tn the darkness, we found a Picasso and a Dali side by side, a proximity resented by both, I am sure. The Picasso was a very early Lautreclike painting of a lady in a hat, very good, Dalts was of a woman with her back to the viewer, to which one's reaction was to do likewise. I was brought to the restaurant by two gesticulating guards, one muttering repeatedly: ‘‘Un medico, un medico." I told them that I was giving a lecture to my wife on the finer points of a Zurbaran. It mattered not. In fairness to them the sight of a distinguished solitary figure in a dark room, talking to himself, lighting occasional matches to reveal beauty ill presented may have been strange, since my wife had left me half an hour previously and found her way to the restaurant, net explanation was that, after seeing so many dark pictures, she felt urgent need for restoration.