Friday, January 29, 2010

29-01-2010




Aarau - The Aaraguer Kunsthaus (Aaraguer Count Art Gallery) - with the extension section, dominated by the two spiraling staircases, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.




It's an interesting collection too, juxtaposing German expressionism (Muller, Kirchner etc) with medieval sculptures, and a room known as 'Caravan' which changes artists and is currently a selection of semi-automatic, fragile pencil and paper drawings. There's also a rodin and a Degas figure, a Giacometti bust and one of his wild pencil self portraits in which the self pours out - not an image thereof.

I was also interested in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "The Wanderer" - he wrote to Henry van de ralder saying "How are you, you eternal wanderer?" before painting it, so it is quite specific, yet also broad as it references Nietsche's Zarathustra:
I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart. I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.
And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience—a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.

Which is somewhat befitting.




http://www.ag.ch/kunsthaus/en/pub/index.php

29-01-2010



Aarau - In the old part of the town where Angela goes to school (and where Einstein went).

28-01-2010


Kraftreaktor Klettereldorad in Lenzburg - where I almost got hearded into a group of primary school kids because I didn't understand the Swiss-German lady even when she spoke very slowly. But then they discovered that I actually could climb.

28-01-2010


lenzburg, the snowy vision I awoke to the first morning

27-01-2010


los angeles, "so it does rain in calfornia" - the view from the transit "lounge".

26-01-2010


wellington, fog as the sea breath finds the land.

26-01-2010

Dove that ventured outside
- rainer maria rilke


Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote:
housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn't it fill our hands differently with its return:
heavier by the weight of where it has been.