munich to zurich

[catching up #2; tenses are all over the place, as you might expect]

this first bit written on a quiet, fast, inexpensive train from munich to zurich*, with leonard cohen's the faith** playing on the ipod as we roll through the summer country towards switzerland. this is immeasurably better than flying.

the 3D display at the zurich hb was dark when i got there, so i passed it by and came directly to wollishofen where hk was waiting for me at the tram stop. i rehydrated extensively while she cooked, then we walked down to the lake when tom got back. after dinner, we allowed the food to settle for a decent period before venturing into the lake, which was clear and not as cold as it looked. i bumped into a duck while swimming to the jetty; it looked surprised, bobbed its head slowly up out of the water, then sent a long string of poop into the depths.

* is it really so hard to get this right? spend less money on highways and cars, stop subsidising gas and the auto industry, learn to eat food grown closer to home, tax cars and gas more, build common-gauge rail lines, and good transit systems almost inevitably become reality.

** apparently based on an old basque song. i first heard this at enrique martinez celaya's lecture at the ranch last summer.

munich

[catching up #1] an assortment of thoughts:

1. there's quite a lot of art in munich (i cherrypicked and went to the glyptothek, the moderne*, and the brandhorst).
2. the munich subway train stations have no faregates, only a ticket validator. this is quite nice and for sure reduces cost of enforcement. but such a fare system (essentially self-checking) only works when a few conditions coexist. rule-abiding, non-freeriding users are probably critical, but the incentive structures built into fares is also important. in munich, a single trip in the two central zones runs about EUR2; a 7 day unlimited pass for the same zones is EUR11.50; the fine for not having a valid ticket is EUR40. clearly, the only intelligent decision is to buy the long-term unlimited pass. this encourages high-volume usage and reduces the need for enforcement. the same thing, by the way, happens in zurich (on which more anon). if only we knew which were necessary and which were sufficient.
3. shops close early. you can't buy a band-aid after 8, but you can be drinking beer and eating sausages til well past midnight. on balance, this is a good thing.
4. and what beer and what sausages. holy crap. special mention: thanks to patrick, we made an excursion to the stunningly touristy andechser pub in the old city and had some draft andechser doppelbock. dark in the glass, crisp, surprisingly clean-tasting, very aromatic with citrus and malt.
5. also, the grocery stores sell beer for less than the price of bottled water, less, in fact, than the price of PBR in cambridge, mass. this was a cause of joy in munich and now, as i write this in cambridge, a source of crushing despair. i thought of buying water for the grilling excursion, but the thought perished rapidly.
6. the isar river runs through munich and is remarkably clean and cold. near thalkirchen, there is a gravel bank where enormous crowds gather to grill on myriad disposable grilling devices and drink beers cooled by immersion in the river. our grilling was almost thwarted by defective matches and failure to completely read the detailed instructions on the grilling device. competence prevailed, and we eventually succeeded in attaining perfectly caramelised bratwurst, herbed pork loin, and white asparagus (you know it is spargel-season when asparagus costs EUR4.60 for a half-kilogram and EUR5 for one kilogram), accompanied by copious quantities of toasted rye bread, cheese, and summer beverages of choice, which are
7. either a radler (wheat beer or lager mixed with lemonade or lemon soda) or an apple-soda (exactly what you'd expect). both are quite civilized, much like
8. quark. why have i never before encountered this remarkable dairy product? it is so versatile, delicate-tasting, and available in germany in a panoply of baked goods
9. which include breads! you can buy them by weight, they are baked fresh every day, and they are strong, brown, and full of spices. the pretzels (or brez'n) are chewy, glossy, flecked with salt and, if you're lucky, still warm.

* what is a pinakothek? it is a mystery.

density and vacuousness at the museum brandhorst

a conversation about great museums a few nights ago reminded me of the brandhorst, which i visited in 2009.

image by art-magazin

after a brief interlude for a stunning andechser doppelbock (dark and clear, with a crisp, malty flavour, plenty of acidity, and the aroma of citrus--thank you patrick), we headed back to the maxvorstadt* to see the new brandhorst museum, designed by sauerbruch hutton. the outside is clad with a bi-coloured steel skin covered with a layer of vertically-affixed ceramic rods glazed in a variety of different colours. the intent was to both shield the building from sun heat and to reduce reverberations from street noise; these objectives achieved, the skin of rods also gives the building an appearance of shifting colouration such that, from afar, it looks more like a collection of rectilinear masses of pure colour than a building.

the collection is from udo and anette brandhorst, yet another pair of tremendously-wealthy art collectors. the brandhorst collection focuses on contemporary artists from europe and north america; they have a stunning number of cy twomblys, and have in fact built the cavernous and beautiful upper galleries expressly to display their collection of twombly's giant rose paintings, a large proportion of the lepanto cycle, and many of his sculptures. i blame my poor education and exposure for my inability to see the slightest sense of wonder, insight, technical development, or rich meaning in these works. fortunately, the profound vacuity of the upper gallery was redeemed by the museum's superb construction (the inside was all limed oak, high ceilings, plastered walls, and frosted glass) and two paintings crammed into the ground floor gallery.

the first, by sigmar polke, is painted on glazed synthetic cloth such that the canvas becomes translucent and reveals the framework of the stretcher behind it; additionally, there is a section of canvas that has been printed with colours handprints and stitched in. the imagery is of a tree bare of foliage and a mountain in segments, both with perspective slightly messed up and represented as blown-up gravure lines painted on with clearly drippy paint--from a great distance, the tree and the mountain appear to have the tone and shade of paint but close-up they are clearly both line art and painting. the title is the three lies of painting which gives rise to a host of possible interpretations given the transparency and intentional fragmentation of the canvas ground and the numerous conscious and explicit pieces of trickery in the painting.

sigmar polke, the three lies of painting, image by the museum brandhorst

the second, by eric fischl, reminds me a little of sargent's el jaleo in the isabella stewart gardner museum. living room #3 (spinning) is part of his krefeld series in which he hired two actors to live in restored mies van der rohe houses and painted a series showing snapshots of their lives. this one is one of the best. the titanium white in the faces creates an irresistible sense of powerful light off to the left, and the sense of movement in the gown suggests an expanse of time, a prior history of interaction, and a durable mood all condensed into an unmeditated and transient moment. this has some connection to the tea ceremony concept of 一期一会.

eric fischl, the living room #3 (spinning), image by the museum brandhorst

john singer sargent, el jaleo, image by carol gerten

margaret was saying [and here, you can read what margaret actually said, which is actually about a completely different thing that i do agree with] that the unique value of paintings is in their ability to do what photographs cannot do, in the same way that the unique value of the novel lies in its ability to do what films cannot do. i think this may be a specifically correct judgment given a particularly good painting and a mediocre photograph, but i can think of many good photographs that are better than mediocre paintings and good films that are better than mediocre books. perhaps a more precise and generalizable rubric is that representations of objects and events are valuable in so far as they capture and can communicate a sort of density of meaning, and they are more valuable the more intense, the more dense they are. these two pieces by polke and fischl (and the flavin and sandback pieces in the pinakothek, and the installations of fragmentary statuary in the glyptothek) are dense with what irene winter calls affective power, the way the numerous pieces by twombly are not.

* margaret also notes that: "In the interests of strict accuracy, the Brandhorst is not at Königsplatz. It's in Maxvorstadt. Königsplatz is a square, not a district. The Glyptothek, meanwhile, is definitely at Königsplatz." 'tis.

pinakothek der moderne

pinakothek der moderne was designed by stefan braunfels and has some truly amazing cast concrete facework. unfortunately, the modern section was mostly underwhelming. fortunately, i could have spent at least four hours in the contemporary galleries.

there were many john chamberlains, though the best one was acme thunderer, placed in a hallway drenched in light from floor-to-ceiling windows.


john chamberlain, acme thunderer, image from the american patrons of the pinakotheks.

and the moderne was more than redeemed by a pair of installations placed side by side through the genius of the curatorial staff. from the stairs to the second floor, a green glow can be seen emanating from one of the galleries. this turns out to be an enormous, high-ceilinged room filled with a dan flavin fluorescent tube sculpture. the green light is remarkably penetrating, such that the tubes begin to vibrate slightly after just a few seconds of observation as parts of your retina become violently overstimulated. the galleries visible through the two exits turn pink, as does the light from the skylights, the way everything turns blue at sunset during the blue hour.


untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection), image from asymptotia

exiting the flavin room in a pink haze, green tubes seared into our retinas, we then came on fred sandback's pink flamingo, two thin columns of pink yarn descending from the ceiling in a white room that, to green-accustomed eyes, vibrated in shades of pink. at the same moment, a man in a pink shirt and a woman in pink pants came into the room. their shadows blocked out the green light from the entryway for an instant, in which time the sculpture flashed the deep, saturated colour of lawn flamingos. a magic moment.

the glyptothek

having spent many (but perhaps not quite enough) of the last few days dozing by the riverbank, we decided that today, being hot and muggy, would be a fine day to see the museums of munich. the glyptothek in koenigsplatz, recommended highly by no less august an individual than irene winter herself, was the first on the list.

it is a small museum with walls of exposed whitewashed brick and a floor of large grey flagstones, with maybe 9 connected halls around a sunny, tree-ful central courtyard. i don't know if i've ever been in a museum as obsessed with material and with displaying statuary with such care and restraint. each pedestal is carefully and beautifully made--most out of a fine-grained pale-grey granite--with the dressing marks still on every face, but with the corners honed to a fine bevel. when the light comes in through the windows, the pedestals achieve the same soft tone as the marble of which many of the statues are made and seem to disappear.

as in the case of the dog below (in front of a horst thuerheimer drawing) many of the fragmentary pieces appeared to be in the process of flying apart, held together only by the edges of their silhouettes.

image from the glyptothek and antiken sammlungen

the pediment sculptures from the east and west facades of the aphaia temple at aegina were both installed a little above head level, on an unadorned blackened steel and granite base with two corner blocks of granite providing the suggestion of the shape of the pediment that would have been behind them. these fragmentary figures of greek and trojan warriors were originally installed in a different configuration which has since been revised.

the group from the western pediment, image from the university of regensburg

there is an entire room of greek and roman busts installed at various heights, creating the impression of walking through a silent and motionless crowd. it was all extremely satisfying.