What art is.

Dearest art enthusiastics

One of the most asked questions in art probably is: What is art? Especially in the newer ages, where sometimes, let's face it, you can't really tell 100%. If you go into a contemporary art exhibition you will surely see people who stand infront of quite odd pieces with puzzled faces. And they assume, we assume, just because it's in a museum it must be art. Well, now I will try to explain or help people to go into these kinds of exhibition maybe a little more relaxed.

For contemporary art, I think, Tracy Emin, the famous artist, described it the best: "Art is a claim." Apparantly, all you have to do, is claim, that what you just made, is art. Sounds easy enough. But of course you have to have or give some sort of backgroundinformation. A good example for this theory is the rather well known installation by Tracy Emin. It's "just" her unmade bed, dirty sheets and all.

Emin stated: This is art. And everyone believed it, still believes it. Even I do, and I think its brilliant. Of course it doesn't always work, but just remember this when you stand infront of a really bizarre piece of "art" next time. It helps. And it also helps to understand the artist. But at some point you should draw the line. It shouldn't get ridiculous.

But now, I'll tell you, what best describes art for me. I once read this article on Kurt Tucholsky, a german writer, and his thoughts on art were perfect. To me.

"Art only has one criterion: goose-pimples"

To me, this hits the spot. It doesn't matter what ara the piece is from, who made it, what it's made from, the craftmanship, what it shows. Those aren't relevant points. What's relevant is, that it touches you in any form. If you instantly adore it or even hate it, it doesn't matter. As long as it creates some sort of reaction, it succeeded. Idealy of course, you love it and you actually get those tucholskyian "goos-pimples". The only real criterion with art should be, that it pleases you. And not by whom it's made or how much you spent on it. Tucholsky is totally right. A genius, he is.

Nahmad Collection

Good Day culture fans,

I went to visit an exhibition I waited for a long time to come to Zurich. As a fan of modern art, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, surrealism... I was excited to hear, that the Nahmad family decided to make their private collection of modern art pieces public and the Kunsthaus Zurich jumped on the opportunity to display this extraordinary collection.

I won't bore you with a lot of details now, but it was a fantastic exhibition! There was everything a fan of modernists could want to see! Picasso, Miro (and a lot of it) , Kandinsky, Monet, Matisse, Modigliani, Cezanne and of course the surrealists Ernst, Dali and Magritte, who's sausage was the official poster. So much fun!

I also adored the way the Kunsthaus presented the collection. There were different sections, the rooms were themed and the walls were a dark grey. It looked stunning and really left the focus on the beautiful pieces of art. What I also enjoyed was that most of the works were framed in beautiful baroque golden frames, which gave the collection a sense of collectiveness, eventough such a broad time period was displayed.

Here's my favorite picture of the day. I took it, because I thought it was brilliant how the older guy focuses on this iPhone and the young guy reads the catalogue (and has amazing socks just by the way). The colours are very greyish, except for the red details... and of course, one of my favorites: A beautiful cubist Picasso, in a golden frame. Brilliant!

Kunst '11 in Zurich

Hello artsy ones,

A little late I would still like to tell you, what I liked best about this year's contemporary art fair in Zurich, the "Kunst 11". Luckily me and my friend got the chance to view the fair on the pre-opening event, everything was still in place, all the important people were present to explain some stuff about their fields of expertise and some artists were present aswell, which I always love.

There was definitely a big focus on photograhic art, alot of photographs in their original states, but also a huge amount of edited pictures in every way possible. And of course there were some traditional pieces of art, paintings and sketches by long-established artist, modernist painters like Miro, Picasso, Klee and such. A trend also lay with quite excentric sculptures and light-installations. Those I can always appreciate, I especially found one piece by Christian Hardeg fascinating. Different coloured neon-light-pipes, which were fitted on a huge board. It looked, if you stood infront of it, as if you are standing on a bridge over a highway by night and thousands of cars are racing towards that bridge.

The thing that impressed me and my friend the most, though, was a young american artist. As we wandered through the different showcases of the galleries one picture caught our eye. It was a woman, a portrait on a red background.

As we came closer to the picture we saw the brilliance of this rather ordinary seeming portrait. It was not a painting as we thought, but a photograph! You can clearly see the hair and the eyes, but the rest of it seems painted. Alexa Meade, the artist, was there and explained to us, that she draws on people and objects, then takes a picture. I think that is an amazing merge between painting and photography and a real skill, to be able to do that. Of course, when I came home I googled this discovery! And I was fascinated... still am. Here some pictures:

As always, the visit payed off, we had a fun and fascinating night and some good glasses of wine. Success!

Nedko.

Hey funky lovers!


As a test for the art-part (yeah, that sounds great!) of this funky blog I'd like to ease you into the works of one of my favorite artists. 


I'm talking about Nedko Solakov. He's bulgarian and I came across his work when I went to visit a Giacometti-exhibition in Zurich in 2009. As you guys know, it's a really "big and important" house and it solemnly stands like an erratic block - singled out and full of demands for respect. So I went and looked at the quite interesting but ever-same sculptures of the famous Swiss. I'm honest, it was a little boring. 
But then i saw something weird. There was a little doodle on the base of one of the Giacometti-statues. I was intrigued! What does this mean? What is this? Is this a guerillia-action of an art-rebell?? But then I saw another one! On the way top of the passage-door-thing there were two other doodles - small people who seemed to interact with eachother... and then more! Near the floor, around the lightswitches, by the infoboxes. These little men were everywhere! Plus some funny anecdote-like sentences!

As I exited the Giacometti-Halls I saw announcements that Nedko Solakov would have an exhibition soon and underneath the banners i saw the same little guys! What a great way to advertise!! I went home, more excited about Nedko, I had forgotten all about Giacometti, eager to google him. 
Oh, how I googled him. Just his website made me fall in love with his work even more! The first thing you have to do when you open his website is to choose if you'd like to enter the official or the non-official website. And he wishes you good luck with either one of them. And then he separates his work in simple and complicated works. He's so sarcastic and wonderfully light about seriousness! And he's so funny. And unconventional. The world and everything on it is his canvas. Nothing is safe.


One of my favorite series is called something like "romantic landscapes with something missing" and it's just traditional romantic motives à la Caspar david Friederich, but the key-element is missing. Isn't that great and so funny?? Well, I love it!


An example:

It's a sunset - without sun!! Brilliant! There's also a stormy sea - without a lonely boat. A lovers bench - without the bench. A rainbow - without the red stripe. Ah, he's fantastic!


Oh well, you should go check him out.


www.solakov.net


And at the moment he has exhibitions in England and Italy - if you're from there.