Exploring Public Art – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Visit Catalonia while there’s some kind of festival going on, and you might be lucky enough to see Gegants. They’re huge and heavy figures which, during festivals, are carried by some poor – unseen – soul probably sweating and longing for the moment when he (and it’s invariably a ‘he’) can put his burden down and disappear for a drink. They usually represent various traditional characters, though in the early days, way back in the 15th century, they had the job of telling Bible stories.

Can you spot the boy underneath the gegant? He’s about to try, and almost fail, to lift it onto his shoulders.

While we were staying with daughter-and-family in Premià de Mar over Easter, Malcolm and I, out with granddaughter Anaïs, had a piece of luck. A small band of people were hauling the local gegants out of store, and generally checking them over . They invited us to look round the store if we wanted, and we did. I find some of these creatures a little on the creepy side: all the same, I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t be around on the day that these lumbering giants stalked the streets of the town for one day only.

Come and have a look round the store room with us …

I’ve a feeling that this time, a love story was on the cards. The sort where the Hunk and the Kind and Virtuous Maid live happily ever after.

Do you agree?

For Natalie’s Exploring Public Art Challenge – again.

Our peregrination through France a few weeks ago took us to Laon, a city in Picardy and not too far from Reims. I wanted to see its cathedral, and we did. But we spent more time pottering about the streets of this walled city, its prosperity dating from the 12th century. We were particularly taken by its street art, perhaps more formal and commissioned than most …

… and by one of its characterful main shopping streets in the Old Town, where every shop had a metal sign above it, describing in the mediaeval manner what kind of an enterprise it was. You can have a guess for yourselves, but in a couple of cases, I’ve forgotten the answers.

And then there were always the little touches of whimsy: as in this letter-box in a front door down a back street, and a slightly battered wall with a portrait of some inhabitant from centuries ago …