Had a job interview. Only afterwards did I get a spot of chocolate ice cream on my white shirt. Now that's what I call being successful at grown-up life.
But on to sounding more dignified. Saturday night we saw L´Orchestra I Sedici and Maestro Luigi Sagrestano at Neues Schloss Stuttgart. An evening of classical music as a first Groupon purchase, why yes indeed. The alternative? Well, lots of things. You know, like a discount boob job. But no thank you, German Groupon, some things I might not want at discounted prices.
Hold up, why am I posting pictures of boobs? Dignified things! Focus!
Today I got my art on in Stuttgart. First, at the Staatsgalerie, where there is currently a show on with works by Turner, Monet, and Twombly. The title is "Later Paintings", as all the works are from later in the respective artists' careers. No, I'd never heard of Twombly either, but the curation of this show is very interesting. Curator Jeremy Lewison talks about it a bit with his dubbed German voice at the end of the exhibition, and I'm sure the book says loads about it, so I'll just tell you my take on it. I really liked the visual conversation that was sparked in each room. The thematic titles for each space helped, but the careful selection and placement of the pieces was even more powerful. Form, colour, movement—the differences and similarities between the works made one's eyes even more aware of the style and mood of each one. If there were a scale with one extreme at atmospheric and the other at, for lack of a better word, graphic, then Turner would be at the first end, Monet closer to the middle, and Twombly closer to the graphic end. These and other thoughts made me think that this exhibition is a triumph for really feeling the formal aspects of some artworks.
I didn't get a chance to see the permanent collection, maybe next time.
Later I went to Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The temporary show features the work of Michel Majerus and... well, I didn't particularly care for it. I did like a number of pieces in the permanent collection, notably works by Thomas Müller and Adolf Hölzel. There were also some interesting works by Björn Braun (read | see) which will be up until 9 April. By the time I got to the most amazing stop frame animation of a chicken head stitching its already plucked and somewhat sliced up body back together again, my mechanical pencil was out of lead! Title and creator unknown!
The view from this building is quite something. I took some pictures of everyone enjoying the spring on the lawns, and of some street performers who drew quite a crowd with their juggling-burning-sticks-on-a-unicycle act. Respect.
The other thing that is far too awesome is—yes, you guessed it—the shop. Museum shops are the best!!! This one is filled to the brim with so many beautiful books it physically hurts. Fortunately this is Germany and a large proportion of the selection is in German. But here are some English ones that looked cool.
- Sort of frivolous, but probably inspiring—101 Things to Learn in Art School by Kit White.
- It's all there in the title—Art of Armor: Samurai Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection by J. Gabriel Barbier-Mueller.
- A very affordable overview full of colour pictures—Hockney's Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective by Gregory Evans.
- And actually I only saw the second volume but ♥oh my heart♥ there are two—Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Jan Tholenaar, edited by Cees De Jong.
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