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Lovely art-lovers,

I will tell you today, what my favorite museum in Paris is (so far). And of all the ones that you should see or know!

Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris.

It's just... grand! Amazing, lovely, beautiful, well built - everything you'd want in a museum! It mostly displays modern and contemporary art in a permanent collection but it also has changing exhibitions. When I visited the museum for the first time it was a sad, grey, rainy, cold day. Perfect for a museum - plus I felt a little down and a visit to the museum always cheers me up! Aaaanyways, so I went and the first thing you notice is the great location. You have a really pretty view on the Eiffel Tower and it's right at the Seine, so a lovely walk. The second thing is, when you can actually take in the entire and monumental building! The building, which is calles Palais de Tokyo, has two wings and the musée is in the right one. It was built for the International Exposition for Art and Technology in 1937 and the official opening of the musée was 1961. The building was created in a neoclassical style which is instantly clear when you see its fassade with the big columns and the cubic appearance in the ancient greek tradition.

As I entered the building I kindof had an idea of how the inside would look and to be honest, I was a little worried. The building stands so tall, like an erratic block, demanding so much respect and almost making you fear it. But the inside were lovely! The rooms were high, but not to big, there were niches for the various artist and it had a really nice flow to it, there was a given route or circuit if you will - which negates the cubist appearance of the museum! The lighting was amazing, there were no reflections on the paintings and the pieces were extraordinarily well hung! But that's not all! The quality of the artwork was really really high and it gave you an amazing overview of the eras and of the artist that were displayed. You never got tired or felt lost in the museum which is quite an accomplishment - well done!

And one thing I also really enjoyed was the amount of people in the museum. There weren't alot of people... Which is nice, you get to actually take in the pieces of art and think about them and take your time without worrying if you're bothering someone. Very, very pleasant. But I guess also kind of sad, because the best museum (at least in my opinion) goes unnoticed by the broad public.

A Parisian Dream

So, Paris. You can imagine, that I'm really loving it here. The entire city has a magical feel to it! And I really wanted to get to know the city head over heel. So I managed to get an invitation to a fashion show in my first week here which was awesome!
Afterall Paris isn't only the city of art, it's also the city of fashion! Some might say that fashion and art are so close together that you can't tell the difference - well, I think fashion is just one aspect of art! Fashion is art!!

Anyways, I went to the fashion show which was called "Podium Jeunes Stylistes" and I was very excited to see the clothes that the young designers had made for the evening. The theme of the fashionshow was "schizophrenia" and the clothes had to be designed with the theme of the event as guideline.

But as I entered the place where the fashionshow was held, my eye was immediateley caught by something else! The show was held in The Westin Hotel in Paris in the Salon Impérial. A beautiful, beautiful salon featuring impressive second empire-style fresco, lush red velvet curtains, elegant chandeliers and wonderful wooden floors. But the ceiling frescos really took my breath away! They were amazing! The whole rooms was just like out of an old-timed french dream - and this in my first week! Crazy...

After I got used to the fantastic location I could start to observe all the fabulous and well-dressed people and the whole set-up of the fashionshow. It was unbelievable. The modern technology and the traditional room were a perfect complimet to eachother. 

And then the show started. The music was playing loudly, the models were as beautiful as expected and the clothes even more beautiful and creative! It was wonderful. 

Oh, the winner of the show was crowned immediately after the show and Lou De Testa won with her amazing collection of wonderful and inspired outfits. Metal feathers - if that's not schizo... :)

(For more infos about the Podium Jeunes Stylistes Competition: http://www.podiumstylistes.fr/index.php?lang=fr)

Home here in Paris

Salut chers amis,

Eventhough I am in Paris right now, with endless possibilities of art-stuff to see it still pulls me to the things I know. One of the first things I did when I arrived is to find out if there is a center for swiss culture (there is) and what's it showing. I guess, i did it because it's familiar and a place that you automatically feel connected to. Because in the richness of possibilities here it's hard to decide what to do or see or experience next!

So I allready attended a bunch of stuff there, concerts, readings and such but the thing I'm gonna tell you about was a vernissage.
I had heard about this artist back in Bern, but never really made the effort to go and see his work so I figured I might as well do it here.

Pascal Schwaighofer is an artist from the Ticino in Switzerland and he mostly does installations and sculptures. The exhibition was pretty small, just one room, but the pieces were well chosen and displayed. There were a bunch of his rather well-known works on paper, the maps with the mottled paint on them that remind you of maybe meteorological maps, some clay-pieces on a table and also some small slides on a lit up table.

The clay-pieces in perticular caught my eye. At a first glance they almost look like pieces of fossils or maybe snail-houses. But as you get closer you see that they are just small pieces of clay with the fingerprint of the artist on them. It's kindof a paradox, that the artist would duplicate something as unique as a fingerprint so many times. And the way he does it. It seems, that he forms a big piece in the beginning and then just breaks of pieces of the main part. So in a way he deconstructs everything, that a fingerprint is. Unique and complete. There are no half fingerprints. But Schwaighofer breaks the image of the fingerprint and duplicates it. Very interesting and amazing to look at!

The slides were just a bunch more of these clay pieces to look at. It was a welcomed change to the usual exhibitions where you just have to look - here you could actually touch the pieces and interact with them as you tried to find the most beautiful one on the lit up table. It made you feel like you're in the process of creating the exhibition yourself. It was definetly great.

S'up Art-Fans. Relocation. Salut les enthusiasts de l'art

Sooo, I'm very very sorry, that I haven't been posting more of my semi-amateur artstuff but yes, I moved. All in the name of art!! Indeed I did. I moved to PARIS! So I'll be posting somewhat interesting and definetly local cultural news from the capital of Art (and France) from now on.

So, what does every art-fan do, when they first get to Paris? Yes - it's an unspoken law, you have to go to the Louvre. THE Louvre. The mother of all museums, the queen of artexhibtions and archeology, the biggest museum in the entire world. So I went, it was snowy out (that's how long ago) and it was the same. The same as always.

So here my confession: I don't really like Le Louvre. I think it's way too big, way too full, too loud, the pieces are displayed poorly and even the selection doesn't make my heart beat faster. Obviously I do sometimes still visit this grande maison de l'art but I have to say, I do not really enjoy it. As stated before, there are always way too many people there - and all they want to do is see the famous Mona Lisa. They rush to this painting, which I don't like either by the way, take a quick snapshot from like a million miles away, you can't even see anything because the glass is so thick and the lighting is horrible. And whilst these snapshotchasers do this, they miss the actual highlight of the room. Behind them, vis-a-vis of Mona Lisa, that sneakily smiling minx (sorry Da Vinci) hangs a sensational painting: The Wedding of Cana by the great master Veronese. Breathtaking! And most people just miss it, it's a shame...

What I do enjoy about the Louvre though, is the clever architecture. The famous Pyramids by equally famous architect Ieoh Ming Pei are a marvel. It definetly was a risk to combine such an important and historic building with the modern, very contrasting glass Pyramids. And I also enjoy the great collection of Flemish paintings, for I did my thesis on Rubens. Wonderful works by Rubens!

Sorry for starting my parisian art-reviews with a rant, but there are far more fascinating things to be discovered than same old - same old Louvre. Which is obviously still great. Just not one of my personal greats. D'accord... Â bientôt!

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!