Art & fun for families

Gallery 202, level 2

German artist Sigmar Polke liked to try unconventional materials and techniques in his paintings. He also used images from mass media and bright colors.

In Kathreiner’s Morning Wood, Polke inserted fragments from a wooden crate in a huge piece of fabric. He also inverted his own name and signed as “Henri Matisse” (another great artist) in the bottom left corner.

What can you see in Kathreiner’s Morning Wood? What is the artist trying to tell us with the images he has inserted in his painting?

Gallery 303, level 3

Gilbert & George believe that anything can be art. They find inspiration in the jungle and the desert, in cities and in people.

Most of the images in their works come from the world around them – a pebble’s throw from home. This is why they draw upon the particulars of the East End – the district where they have lived and worked in London for many decades – and the people living there, like the young models that populate this photo-piece!

Gilbert and George met in the 1960s. They soon moved together and began to work together, merging their identities to become Gilbert & George. They think of themselves as “Living Sculptures”, transforming their everyday activities into performance art.

Have you noticed that the artists occupy the center of the image here? Why do you think they have portrayed themselves like this?

Gallery 303, level 3

In the same gallery, you can take a look at Tulips, a sculpture by American artist Jeff Koons.

Koons’s Tulips are like huge colored mirrors where you can see your reflection in a different light. They reflect the things around them, only in a different color. Using bright, metalized cardboard papers, you can create a variety of reflected shapes.

Take a close look. Do these balloons really look like tulips? Do you think they smell like flowers? Have you ever seen tulips this big? Or this bright, in such shrill shades of color? Do the flowers with which you are familiar look like this?

Jeff Koons likes to take everyday objects and transform them, playing with scale and making them look bigger than they usually are.

In Tulips, he used stainless steel in impossibly bright colors, and this makes the balloon-like flowers look as if they were lightweight. Their manufacturing history is quite different: a heavy material that required tons of mathematical formulas and tests. Quite a feat for an artist!

Koons’s multicolor balloon flowers look like larger-than-life toys – any boy or girl’s dream come true. In fact, many of Koons’s sculptures are high-spirited, playful works of art. The artist seems to believe that you can tell interesting stories with deceptively simple, funny-looking art.

Think of the things you use in everyday life. What would they look like if they were bigger? Or brighter? Or made of a different material?

Hallway next to Gallery 303

How do you feel when you look at a work of art? ARTETIK: From the Art is a digital experience you cannot afford to miss!

Pick your favorite work of art from the Museum Collection, or a work that has caught your eye, then select the emotion you associate this work with, and see the result. Fascinating!

Experience art in the Museum Collection and share your emotions! You can also explore other works arousing fascination and other feelings in the viewer.

ARTETIK: From the Art is a project carried out by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Google Arts & Culture.

Museum Square

Getting out, in the Museum Square, you will come across Puppy, a West Highland white terrier designed by American artist Jeff Koons.

Is that a dog? How come it is so big? Can you think of your favorite animals recreated as large-scale structures? Puppy is the Museum’s watchdog: it keeps watch of the Museum, protecting staff members and visitors, welcoming them when they come in and bidding farewell when they leave.

Koons makes use of humor and unconventional materials in his works. Puppy, for instance, is made of… plants and flowers!

Drawing inspiration from the magnificent gardens that surrounded imperial palaces in the past, with their fountains and sculptures, their flowers and trees, their geometric layouts and hedge mazes, Koons designed his own garden… in the shape of a dog!

Puppy is like no other sculpture in the Museum: it is a “living” – and, therefore, ever-changing – work of art. Its flowers have a life of their own, and they need to be looked after.