Amusement Parks: Roller Coaster Panic at Tibidabo, Barcelona

This is a snapshot I took of the roller coaster at Tibidabo Amusement Park in Barcelona. 

I did more or less what those automatic cameras do when you are sliding down the roller coaster: capture the panic expression in your distorted face. The only difference is that this picture was not for sale in the stall  at the end of the ride!

I hope they find Barcelona Photoblog some day and download their photograph for free.

Twisted Shapes: An Approach to Rebecca Horn's Sculpture

This metallic cubic sculpture was made by the artist Rebecca Horn and it is a distinctive feature of La Barceloneta beach next to the quarter by the same name. Before showing my first photograph about this work I had seen it portrayed in a thousand ways. If you try to capture it as is, early or late during the day, when there is no one, it may look rather dull but the presence of people add up to the structure a little bit. It occurred to me that this man in that strange pose and the arched building maintained some awkward parallelism. On second thought now, I think that his fortune might be as twisted as the building itself, I just wish I was in a mistake. I remember someone said here that sometimes we tag people with our pictures without even knowing what their real conditions are. That is absolutely true.

ou get a better idea in this Google Earth Map View of La Barceloneta Quarter and the tiny metallic sculpture by the beach.

Art Nouveau Balcony: An Integrating Modern Style

As you know Art Nouveau distinctive features are the use of ornamental shapes and patterns, mainly organic like these animals protruding from the balcony. Art Nouveau was as an international art movement with different names: Jugendstil, in Germany, Stile Liberty in Italy, Sezession in Austria and Modernism in Spain. It integrates different streams in art and design. For example, see this balcony, the abundance of motifs is almost Baroque in style and that bird might as well stand for a gargoyle on any gothic cathedral but at the same time all those characteristic natural elements seem to writhe and adopt impossible innovative forms breaking all previous canons. Most of all it is an emphasis on decorative arts based upon craftsmanship that goes hand in hand with symbolism, a consequence of industrial revolution, the constant search for modernity and the rupture with XIX historicism in arts.