Like a gaggle of well heeled, well upholstered femmes d'un certain age, the venerable institutions of Madrid's Museums Mile are all having a bit of work done.Their cosmeticians of choice range from Rafael Moneo, who is discreetly and soothingly fussing around the grande dame of the Prado, to Swiss clinicians Herzog de Meuron, who propose more radical surgery for the Fundacio La Caixa. First to be unveiled, however, is Jean Nouvel's addition to the Museo Reina Sofia, Spain's national modern art museum and repository of Picasso's Guernica. With its hovering, tongue-like roof and viscerally red skin, Nouvel's new building certainly racks up the shock value, like a huge flayed organism bleeding and glistening in the Madrid sun. It is also unashamedly monumental, an architecture of engorgement and enhancement that toys, in an almost Frankensteinian way, with scale and proportion. Like its architect, it is no shrinking violet.
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