Checking out Chagall

Hi again there,

So there is a pretty big and as it seems important Marc Chagall exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. As you can imagine I was one of the first ones there. When I began my studies in art Chagall was my of my favorite expressionist painters. The colors and the melancholic tone of his pieces were always something that spoke to me. So naturally I was full of anticipation.

The exhibition was beautifully arranged, as the Kunsthaus always manages to achieve with its shows. The selection of paintings was broad and as I learned it took over two years for the curatorial team to aquire the works, coming from all over the world, from private collections, museums and galleries.

The War 1964-1966

The exhibition focused primarily on the years from 1911 to 1922, a crucial period in Chagall's artistic formation. Over 90 works trace his career in Paris and in is homeland Russia during the period of the revolution. Uniquely among his contemporaries, Chagall developed an art that articulates his Jewish and Russian culture while entering into a dialogue with the visual languages of modern art - from Fauvism to Cubism and Orphism, from Expressionism to Suprematism.

I know I said Chagall was one of my favorite artists when I started at University. But as I was looking at the pieces now I couldn't find the access I used to have to Chagall's poetic, intuitive, almost dreamy pieces of art. Before I found the famous flying cows and violin-playing goats, the floating lovers intriguing and beautiful. Now I found them rather silly, which I know I have no reason for. It all seemed more illustrative, almost childish and the colors seemed to vibrant and intrusive for me.

The Yellow Room 1911

But still, the quality of the works, the selection and the exhibition itself was great and of extraordinary quality. It was also the first time that so many works of different timeperiods of Chagall were united in one room which was a pleasure to see.

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!

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.