Petruschki's Journey Into The Blue- Chapter 3 Part 2 - In deep blue images
Al blogpost en Español llegaras AQUI
For the german version of the blogpost click HERE
In December 2019 we went on a journey by bus and train through Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland. The aim was the exhibition Protest! by Derek Jarman in Dublin. But there was so much to see on the way there. In the end we had visited 21 exhibitions and had also discovered a few other interesting stories. Here is the 2nd part of the sequence of this journey. We are beginning in the permanent collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Lukas Cranach der Ä., Die Heilige Sippe (Torgauer Altar) 1509 Detail
This detail is from a triptych, one of the earliest major commissions that Cranach carried out in Wittenberg as a court painter of Saxony. It is dedicated to the theme of the Holy Tribe. According to legend, Mary was related to the mothers of some of the apostles. Mary holds a book in her hand. It seems she just read it. Mary with the book as a symbolic image is supposed to refer to the announcement of the Messiah.
I've always liked the reading Maria. I don't know what literacy was like in those days. And for women in the late Middle Ages. Maria was a carpenter's wife, simple people. Here Maria reads and is interrupted by Gabriel. She stuck her finger between the pages so that she could continue later.
Lee Krasner, Through Blue 1963
Lee Krasner Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 11.Oktober – 12. Januar 2020
Lee Krasner Through Blue, 1963 Größe: 191.8 x 147.3 cm.
A wonderful exhibition. For a long time Lee Krasner was primarily known as the wife of Jackson Pollock and less as an independent artist. But already from a young age she was determined and steadfast in her own art. She kept reinventing herself. More about that later.
In “Through Blue” Krasner experimented by painting with her left hand after she had broken her right arm. Often she pressed the paint directly onto the canvas and worked on it with her fingertips.
Last exhibition:
Lee Krasner - Color Vivo; Spain / Bilbao: Guggenheim Museum
18.09.20 - 10.01.21Centre Pompidou, Bilbao Woman in Abstraction
19 May - 23 August 21
Guggenheim, Bilbao Women in Abstraction
8 of May 21 - 30 of January 22
Installations of the Coletivo Bonobando
Take the train from Frankfurt to Berlin
Love and Ethnology The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (After Hubert Fichte)
Installations of the Coletivo Bonobando
Hubert Fichte has been a reference for me since my early youth. As an author, he made ethnological research trips with his companion, the photographer Leonore Mau. They were always openly shaped by his subjective views. He called it ethnopoetry himself. He also wrote an ethnological book about the Hamburg pub “Palette”.I was very happy and excited when I saw that there was an exhibition in Berlin, inspired by him. It was the last part of the cooperation project “Love and Ethnology” between the Goethe-Institut and the House of World Cultures, which took place between 2017 and 2019 in Lisbon, Salvador de Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Dakar, New York and Berlin and was realized with numerous partners.
In the end, I was a little disappointed with the Berlin exhibition. It seemed too arbitrary to me in its associative form.
Meret Oppenheim
Meret Oppenheim x = Hase Galerie Alexander Levy 2.11.19 – 20.12.19
Dear Meret Oppemheim. My friend Isabel got me excited about her when we were young.
In 1933 Meret Oppenheim, then twenty, moved to Paris. She was sure that she wanted to be an artist. Alberto Giacometti and Hans Arp introduced her to the surrealist circles. She became famous for the fur cup. The fur cup was exhibited in New York as early as 1936 and bought by the Museum of Modern Art. But her work goes much further than this surrealist icon and is immensely diverse. From the finest drawings that open doors to the unconscious, to abstruse objects, with humor and sarcasm.
An intimate exhibition. In the office of the wonderful Alexander Levy gallery. You could hear Meret Oppenheim's texts on a cassette recorder, read by herself.
Recent exhibition:
Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Dänemark
FANTASTIC WOMEN 25.7.2020 - 8.11.2020
SURREAL WORLDS FROM MERET OPPENHEIM TO FRIDA KAHLO
Van Gogh, still life with plaster statuette
Potsdam
Van Gogh Stillleben Museum Barberini 26.10.2019 – 2.2.2020
Vincent van Gogh, still life with plaster statuette, 1887
The small torso of Venus on this still life caught my attention. Her curves - breasts, stomach, buttocks - are a little too lush for a classic venus and the painter's stroke makes them vibrate. She exudes a very tangible sensuality and the desire for love and eroticism can be felt. Next to it are two books, their titles are recognizable. They are books with the subject of love. It is a picture of longing. In a letter from that time, Van Gogh wrote to his sister about his failures in love.
Permanent exhibition, often with exhibitions with a special theme: Van Gogh im Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Upcoming exhibition
Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources February 27, 2022 - May 22, 2022 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California
The game of chess, Sofonisba Anguissola 1555
The game of chess, 1555 Sofonisba Anguissola
There was also no exhibition of her that we could visit. But I really want to show her to you.
Sofonisba Anguissola, the female renaissance painter, portraits her sisters and her maid here. It's an amazing game of looks. And emotions. Joy and glee, indignation. At that time there were hardly any depictions of everyday scenes like this. Most of the scenes from everyday life were incorporated into religious themes. Sofonisba Anguissola turned to her family for help due to the lack of models.
She received a profound artistic education because her father recognized her great talent early on. She had a good reputation as a portrait painter from an early age. She lived at the Spanish court as a court lady of the queen. She taught the art of painting and painted the royal family. When the queen died, she taught and cared for the daughters.
When she returned to Italy, on the sea crossing, she fell in love with the young sea captain. She married him against the will of the king. They stayed together until they died. She continued to paint successfully. Peter Paul Rubens and later his student Antonio van Dyck visited her.
Exhibition: LE SIGNORE DELL'ARTE. Storie di donne tra '500 e '600 5 February - 6 June 2021 There you can also see works of Artemisia Gentilesci and other female painters from renaissance and baroque
Rembrandt van Rjn, self-portrait with red cap
Berlin to Cologne by train
Inside Rembrandt 1606-1669 11/01/2019 - 03/01/2020
Rembrandt van Rjin self-portrait with red cap around 1660 - exhibition flag
You were not allowed to take photos in this exhibition.
A beautiful exhibition, designed like a play - with a prologue, 5 acts and an epilogue. But more about that in a later post.
I like this self-portrait with a red cap as an exhibition flag. A person with a knowing look, full of sadness and great warmth, who looks directly at you. He was 54 years old when he painted this. He was declared insolvent years earlier and lived at the time in the Rosengraacht, a poor district of Amsterdam. In the year this picture was taken, his son Titus employed him in his art shop. So he could maintain business connections and accept orders.
Next exhibitions:
Basel Rembrandts Orient Kunstmuseum Basel 31.10.2020 – 14.2.2021
Frankfurt Nennt mich Rembrandt! Durchbruch in Amsterdam Städel Museum 9.12.2020–5.4.2021
Madrid Rembrandt y el retrato en Ámsterdam 1590-1670, online visit
Rembrandts Porträtmalerei Museo Thyssen, online visit possible
Museum Het Rembrandthuis permanent exhibition Rembrandt-museum in Amsterdam
underpass on a winter night, Cologne
And because it shimmers so beautifully blue - this Cologne underpass on a winter night
Martin Kippenberger, Deutscher Eierknaller 1996
By train to Bonn
Martin Kippenberger German Egg Cracker 1996
Martin Kippenberger Bitte schön Danke schön A retrospective Bundeskunsthalle November 1, 2019 - February 16, 2020
Martin Kippenberger - he lived from 1953 to 1997… I was depressed when I went through this exhibition. So much playfullness, liveliness, insolence. Overcoming all the shit in life with the game. And then his early death. I involuntarily wonder what Kippenberger would have done next. Will the intensity of the game cost you your head and neck in the end? I mean, is it like Genet's tightrope walker? Is this intensity only possible, if you can break your neck at any moment? The real art of being. Beeing, not selling. Oh man, I don't know. In any case, he's gone and left a lot of joy, ridicule and cynicism. An expansion of the perspective, so to speak.
Next exhibition:
Museum Folkwang Essen 29. January – 2. May 2021; The Happy End Of Franz Kafkas Amerika
Tate Gallery , London
With train to London
Tate Britain Winter Comission
Anne Hardy, The Depth of Darkness, The Return Of The Light
An afternoon in London. A dismissive city. So it seemed to us. In the evening we took the bus to the ferry to Dublin.
We saw this installation in the early dark. It really looked as if there was snow on the steps.
Genieve Figgis, Lusty Ladies 2019
Dublin
Genieve Figgis, Lusty Ladies 2019
Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to The Digital Age IMMA September 21, 2019 - March 22, 2020
A fantastic museum, the IMMA in Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It is housed in the former Royal Hospital. There are always several exhibitions to see. We came because of Derek Jarman and then looked at this exhibition:
Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to The Digital Age
Quite an interesting idea, an exhibition about longing in our times. Or about desire? And about the change in what one desires. At the beginning of the 20th century its purely romance, sex and love, than desire is transformed. Now one longs for an intact environment or for our earth, which is healed again after its destruction. The exhibition was very top-heavy and had a kind of coldness and distance that didn’t let me connect to it.
Screen Shot Painting of Lucien Freud, Detail
Lucien Freud, Donegal Man, profile, 2007
Freud Project 2016 – 2021
Life about everything: Lucian Freud and Jack B.Yeats IMMA
June 28, 2019 – January 20, 2020
In the exhibition, works by Lucian Freud were juxtaposed with those of Jack B. Yeats. Freud was all his life interested in Yeat's work and particularly valued its strength and energy. For 20 years Freud had the ink drawing “The dancing port workers” hanging next to his bed. In this exhibition you can see the great strength of the two painters.
Past exhibitions Lucian Freud self-portraits, which can still be viewed virtually:
Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits
Royal Academy London
Museum Of Fine Arts Boston The Self Portraits
Upcoming exhibition:
Lucian Freud in Focus 6 July 2021 – 16 January 2022 Tate Liverpool
Screenshot, Derek Jarman Blue 1993
So that's where I arrived at my destination. I didn’t want to stop wandering around. It was also a journey through time. The impressions followed closely and mingled until they were connected. And formed a network for the tightrope walkers.
As the first blog relates to Derek Jarman and how he inspired me to take this trip, a big chapter will also be dedicated to him. Then you will learn more about his films, his garden, his projects and his painting.
The exhibition Dereek Jarman Protest! begins with this film and a self-portrait that he painted when he was 17. When asked why the film “Blue” didn't show any pictures, he replied: “Because the virus is invisible”.
The exhibition Protest! will be on view at the Manchester Art Gallery. It has been postponed because of the pandemic. And opens on May 21, 2021 - October 3, 2021. You can view pictures, films, interviews by and about Derek Jarman on the website.
Article about it on BBC News - News Director Derek Jarman remembered, 40 years after his controversial debut
