Headlines ripped from art

MADRID — At home, a Chicago police press pass and a smile won’t get you anywhere you can’t go with a smile alone. But I keep my media credentials current anyway, for a reason that would send Mike Royko spinning in his grave: free admission to European museums.

The low position of the fourth estate in the U.S. — battered by a would-be dictator who doesn’t appreciate fact-obsessed busybodies contradicting his delusions — hardly need be mentioned.

And honestly, I’m not sure whether the free pass means Europeans respect journalists more, or merely pity them. The unemployed also get into museums free.

If you’re wondering how I found myself in Spain, that’s easy: My wife wanted to go, and as scant as my desire was — considering the time, expense and effort involved — I wanted to be the guy who wouldn’t go to Spain even less. Turns out, there’s a lot of cool stuff there. Barcelona is silly with architecture by their wild genius, Antoni Gaudi. (“EAT YOUR HEART OUT!” I tweeted to our architecture critic Lee Bey.)

And Madrid has the Prado, the national art museum. In its collection is Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” which Americans typically glimpse in a 2-square-inch sliver in a textbook. I spent 20 minutes gawping at its full-size wonder, where humanity dooms itself to hell, as far as I can tell, for the sin of eating berries with birds. Stepping into a gallery, I confronted a more colorful version of the “Mona Lisa.” You might know already, but it came as a shock to me. There are others?

AFP/Getty Images

While I enjoyed the break from continually tossing any random thought, scrap of news or actual life experience into the hopper and turning the crank that grinds it all into a column, old habits do die hard. As much as I wanted to stroll past football fields’ worth of enormous historical and classical paintings, my mind a pleasant blank, certain canvases had a way of being almost too current. The news has a way of springing out at you.

It started the day before, at the Reina Sofia museum, contemplating Picasso’s “Guernica,” his massive masterpiece decrying the fascist bombing of the Basque town in 1937. A reminder that World War II didn’t start on Dec. 7, 1941, or even Sept. 1, 1939, but festered for years with growing acts of barbarism. Something to keep in mind following the news from Ukraine.

At the Prado I was stopped dead in my tracks by Peter Paul Rubens’ “Diana and Callisto.” Look at the downcast expression of shame on Callisto, who, being undressed for a bath, has her pregnancy revealed to her fellow nymphs, and more importantly, the goddess Diana, who we see reacting in alarm, her arms outstretched.

That’s very 2022. The reversal of Roe v. Wade makes every baby bump of interest to law enforcement in half the country, and every high school locker room a potential setting for a reenactment of the myth, which does not end well for Callisto — Jupiter’s jealous wife, Hera, turns her into a bear, which is why the star Callisto is found in Ursa Major.

A few steps away, another Rubens, “Achilles Discovered Among the Daughters of Lycomedes,” wouldn’t stay in its own era. The Greek hero is hiding out, living as a woman — not a practice 2022 invented. Crafty Odysseus has been dispatched to sniff him out, disguised as a peddler. He spreads out his goods, and while the women go for the jewelry and baubles, Achilles, true to his warrior nature, puts on the helmet, and is revealed as a man.

Used with permission of the Museo Nacional del Prado

Spain is a majority-Catholic country where abortion has been legal nationwide for a dozen years. As for trans issues, a court there found that barring transgender minors from gender changes is unconstitutional. Sure, they have their own troubles — police in Madrid feel obligated to cluster around the entrance of their downtown headquarters, brandishing shotguns and assault rifles. We’re not quite there, yet.

So I don’t want to be one of those Americans who goes abroad and starts running down home. America is still a great place to live, despite all the efforts to turn it into a zombie cult. But we are more of a backward-looking nation in the grip of religious fanatics than Spain. Which strikes me as news, and not good news.