I had planned to do a series on graffiti in honor of Banksy, revealing my secret anarchic tendencies, but it appears I have forgotten. Sad, Graffiti Week had a nice ring to it. Anyway, here are a few graffiti from our trip:


(Unrelated, of course, except in that they are both graffiti)

Please enjoy your Friday.

Entropa

“We knew the truth would come out. But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.”

–David Černý

To mark its presidency of the EU, the Czech Republic commissioned David Černý to make a sculpture to be installed at the EU Council building in Brussels. Actually, he was supposed to coordinate the "joint work of 27 artists, each one from a different Member State," but decided it would be more fun to create each piece himself and credit some fake but suitably pretentious artists instead. 

Holland, Italy / Germany, Bulgaria

Entropa plays on stereotypes, which is always a fraught endeavor, but some of the references truly are meaner than others. Bulgaria, for example, is a bunch of interconnected (apparently Turkish) toilets. Spain is a big void of cement and rebar. Italy would seem to have gotten off easy with the football field but for the smug caption. And Britain is altogether missing. But then Sweden is an IKEA box and Belgium is a box of chocolates. 

Bulgaria wants out of the sculpture, as does Slovakia (apparently a body in the form of a Hungarian sausage?).  Given the suspicious shape of the German highways, I wouldn't be surprised if Germany did also. The artist denies he was making any allusion there but I don't believe him. 

The clever representation of Poland (left) depicts priests putting up a rainbow flag, Iwo Jima style. 

In conclusion, all I know is that PJPII is not laughing.

Graffito antico

While in Verona we strenuously avoided Juliet's tourist traps, probably at the expense of some great balcony shots, opting instead for some long and slow strolling. The main feature of our walking tour (besides the real watermelon-kiwi popsicle) turned out to be San Zeno Maggiore, a neat old basilica built over the crypt of the outspoken old guy himself. Even though I was partly distracted, working to ignore the epic battle going on between my stomach and the huge chunk of buffalo mozzarella I had for lunch, I was affected by the distinctive atmosphere of this crypt turned church turned monastery improved to become basilica. The place had a nice feel, like I wouldn't have minded staying a while to say a few confessions or something if there hadn't been a growing fear of my having lactose intolerance dominating my consciousness. 

The frescoes painted on various layers of the wall were really beautiful and in impressive condition; I wish the light had allowed more photos. Some pilgrims just couldn't resist adding their mark to this one. How was it ever okay to carve something into the Holy Mother's shoulder?

graffiti (noun): plural of graffito, diminutive of graffio (It. scratching, scribble); origin: anthropological, for ancient wall inscriptions found in the ruins of Pompeii (1851)

city art in Lugano

The Swiss Miniatur effect

My older sister – I'll call her "Heidi," like the Swiss milkmaid - has always been my hero (cf. the 7th grade character sketch I wrote about her, calling her my personal hero. One of my reasons was that she'd never taken drugs "even though she's been offered." Also around this time, though I did not put this in my paper, she told me that this really mean kid who harassed me on the bus would probably get "stuffed in a locker" once we made it to high school, a bit of perspective which gave me great comfort that year.) Lately I've been thinking about how hard it is to be the oldest – she has to be braver, more determined, more responsible, more forgiving, and more patient than the rest of us. We're generally twenty steps behind and totally unaware of what happened while we were catching up.

I'm coming around to my point, which is that I always learn a lot from "Heidi" (and from her husband "Peter" for that matter.)  In addition to being my moral exemplar, she is my personal liberal arts tutor. So one thing I did not know before her recent visit was that artists used to paint themselves into their pictures (often with this queer look at you out of the painting). Now that I know this, I see it everywhere, of course. Anyway, this led us into a long discussion of "trompe l'oeil" effects, pictures within pictures, and how weird it is that took artists so long to use painting as a means of personal expression.

Here, art and science met in a weird philosophical way, as we considered the Swiss Miniatur effect – "probably our [my] most valid fear about living in Switzerland," according to Swiss Mr. That is, what would happen if we went to visit Swiss Miniatur and saw ourselves standing outside of mini Swiss-Miniatur, and then looked closer and saw mini-mini us going to mini-mini Swiss-Miniatur inside the mini Swiss-Miniatur... and so on. Would the world implode? Or would our minds fold in on themselves? If neither of these things happened, would we have physical proof of the multiverse theory? How fast would a paper about this get into "Science"? And would anyone care that artists have been thinking about this for more than a thousand years?

Art heists are all the rage

In case you have missed all the recent news, stealing art is rather in vogue here in Switzerland. As is finding it back in weird places. It seems that a country with finger shields on its ATMs would have some serious security on its works of art, but alas, they just cannot keep their paintings on the walls.

In just the past year: 1. A Ferdinand Hodler painting which had been reported stolen earlier in the year (and had been missing since 2006) was mysteriously found in the archives of a local cultural foundation. 2. Masked men with guns stole a Cezanne, Monet, a Degas, and a Van Gogh from a museum in Zurich. The Monet and the van Gogh were later recovered in the parking lot of a Zurich hospital. 3. Two Picassos were stolen from a museum outside Zurich. Still missing. Check out the list of missing art on this weird police website. 

I'm really not sure why, as the world's leading per capita consumer of chocolate, they have not tried offering chocolate yet.  The M&Ms reward seem to work in recovering "The Scream" a few years ago.... 

Mark Rothko Retrospektive

My Munich buddies and I packed into the Kunsthalle to see the Mark Rothko exhibit last week with all kinds of folk eager to catch the show in its last weeks. After a read through his biography (beware the surprise ending) we took a stroll through a string of galleries which nicely traced his progression from representative scenes to the abstract color forms that we all know and love (and which, shame on me for saying so, make nice greeting cards). 

Once we were into the color forms ("Multiforms" sayeth my flyer) section of the gallery, there was no going back – maybe this is how Rothko felt – we were stuck in feeling-land, moving from mood to mood with a decreasing number descriptive titles to light our way. As we moved into the tall room with his works of consuming proportion, I started to feel as fuzzy as the edges of his paintings.

I missed it, but somewhere in the exhibition, Frau B. told me, Rothko was quoted as saying that his paintings should ideally be viewed individually in an isolated places, as a religious encounter. If his art is an experience of this sort, it then seems strange to bombard an audience with a hundred experiences in short succession. Museums and galleries are the not in the business of spiritual experience, I realize, but the disconnect bothered me. Future museum curators take note! The (this) common person cannot handle so much experience in one afternoon and likes to follow the artist's instructions.

Art crimes

For some reason, many parts of Europe I've seen have surprising amounts of graffiti. My hypothesis is that it doesn't get painted over as promptly, so it slowly grows and spreads to all kinds of surfaces until everyone's just used to seeing it and stops minding. I guess there's not a graffiti squad waiting for your call with cleanser like there is in Chicago. And maybe the implications of letting it remain aren't as scary.

I read a book about the gangs of Chicago once. It laid out the intricate hierarchies and alliances between gangs in various cities, covered drugs and guns extensively, and explained deadly color combinations, but I really don't think it mentioned anything about gang graffiti and its purpose. Marking out territory? Are there gangs in Lugano claiming neighborhoods? If so, the gang named "Pooh" controls all of the underpasses.

Anyway, Banksy can rest easy – the graffiti artists around here won't be stealing the world spotlight from him anytime soon. Lugano's few token anarchists remain uncreative, so "we are looking for the queen of the drug" is about as edgy as it gets. Man, I hope they found her before they graduated high school.

Paul Klee

In a moment reminiscent of the one in which I realized that The Beatles weren't American (thankfully don't remember and therefore can't admit when that happened), I found out last weekend that the artist Paul Klee is (mostly) Swiss. The Swiss art museum we were at decided to claim him, anyway.

Even though he was born, grew up, and died in Switzerland and even though his mother was Swiss, he was considered German like his father. And, tragically, his application for citizenship wasn't approved until after he died. No exceptions to the process, I guess.

Klee has always been one of my favorite modern artists, at least partially, I know, because of my attraction to all things tiny. Who can resist those little symbolic drawings, the birdies and the fishes, the tiny figures floating in a spiritual stew of color and music? I learned at the museum that many people underestimated him because of his primitive style. But I appreciate it -- I'm glad that he knew that some things are too complicated to understand as an adult. And now that I know he's Swiss (if only in his heart), I like him even more!