by Jean Marie Carey | 24 Dec 2013 | Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
August Macke, Märchen (Sindelsdorf), 1911, Gouache, Deckweiß, Aquarell August Macke, Märchen (Sindelsdorf), 1911, Gouache, Deckweiß, Aquarell
Franz Marc note to August Macke:
19.12.1910
Sindelsdorf
Du Gauner und alter Kulissenschleicher,
schwelge nur ruhig in den Kulissengeheimnissen anderer, einmal und zwar bald, (hörst Du?), musst Du auch aus Deinen Kulissen heraus vor die Rampe, dann schleich ich hinter Dich und beseh mir die Garderobe dieses Genies. – Übrigens lasse ich jetzt einen F …. nach dem anderen in meiner Malerei, – hörst Du sie nicht? Dröhnend!! Ich rechne nicht mehr auf den Besuch der Leute vor Weihnachten und werde also Deine Sachen nächstens zusammenpacken; es tut mit wahrhaftig leid, – sie sind mir so vertraut und lieb geworden. Soll ich die Sachen von Helmuth auch alle dazupacken? Vielleicht schicke ich das gerahmte Stilleben einmal eigens, wenn es Dir damit nicht eilt. Schreib mir bitte darüber. Grüsse Frau Lisbeth herzlichst. Viel Glück und ›Mut‹! zum Einzug in’s Atelier!
Dein Fz. M.
• • •
Although FM kind of jokes here about it perhaps being time for Helmuth Macke – who has only just arrived – to depart, FM quickly gets used to having Helmuth around. At the end of the same month, the nurturing, self-possessed teenager makes art history happen…
by Jean Marie Carey | 5 Nov 2013 | Animals, Animals in Art, Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL
Recovered Blue Horses
So you have probably heard by now the incredible story of how hundreds of amazing paintings were recovered right here in München – right here in Schwabing! – from the derelict apartment of an “art dealer” who had stored them in haphazard fashion amid cans of apricots and bottles of sherry. Included in the cache are long-missing works by Max Beckmann, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse. Of course most happily found is the painting above, one of Franz Marc’s Blue Horses missing for more than 70 years.
It has been super-exciting to be so lucky to be here for this momentous occasion. Everyone – not just at the museum but everyone in the city – is talking about the fantastic aspects of the story (please read up on it; it’s sure to become even more fascinating) but what is most awesome is the jubilation and delight people are expressing. I can’t think of many places where a city-wide celebration would erupt over such a story.
Of course I am not unmoved. FOCUS magazine broke this story on Monday. When I saw the headline in the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Twitter feed I ran out to the news vendor to get a copy and snagged the last one, and the last print SZ in the stack too. I am very happy to have these print artifacts of this wonderful occasion.
Here are links from the Daily Mail (UK); Time Magazine (US); and Süddeutsche Zeitung (DE).
I am thrilled that one of the missing Blue Horses was found period, but it’s beyond overwhelming to be right here…Hopefully Turm der Blauen Pferde is hanging out in someone’s garage or wine cellar or something.
by Jean Marie Carey | 12 Oct 2013 | Art History, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps, Stuff Found in Library Books
The Blue Flask: A Story Told in Text Message
Pt. 1
A few nights ago, I had a dream in which one of the key objects later appeared in physical form during the day. I thought this was a bit unusual, in that the object, while quotidian, is not something you would see every day, let alone find on the street…
The object is this: a blue thermos type aluminum flask. The dream was actually a fragment of memory about something that had actually happened: a battle of petty ecological one-uppersonship and unintentionally amusing symbolism. Seeking to appear both more recycly than thou and also make a statement of personal taste, this guy had dispensed with plastic water bottles for a flask that looked exactly like the one in the picture, except I am sure minus the millions of microbes. The guy’s sort of but not really rival, a female, at the first opportunity produced her own personal power statement water bottle, ornately patterned in some sort of pink, green, and brown-over aluminum paisley. Also, this bottle was significantly larger.
Because I was in fourth grade (not really it was only a few years ago), and had a clear line of sight to the bottle duel, I poorly concealed some giggling. Observing this my friend across the room looked at me questioningly, whereupon I silently pointed out the comparison. My friend also began quietly laughing, and later, in another location, we both laughed quite a bit.
This was a tiny episode in a sprawling “big fish”-type saga, and I have not thought about it in some time, until this week when someone brought to my attention the names of both bottle-owning individuals, reunited for a charity affair, a telethon to benefit the humorless…J/K those last two phrases.
Pt. 2
The dream about the bottle was very fleeting, and it was about the incident, and then I dreamed about other unrelated stuff. But when I woke up I could see those bottles through my lashes before I quite opened my eyes. IKR! But it was a dream.
Pt. 3
Later the day of the morning/night of the dream, I went to the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek. This is not unusual, I go there almost every day. What is unusual is to see a blue aluminum water bottle wedged into the space between a windowsill and a window on the second floor in a rarely used reading room (and in fact by a window that is rarely opened since it is always winter). Instead of fleeing in distress I leaned out over the parapet and window frame and fished the bottle in with the help of my scarf. I brought it home and I still have it, figuring that like in The Grudge there is no point in getting rid of it since it has already located me. Even though I can drink as much Löwenbrau Triumphator as anyone in my adopted kingdom I don’t like to carry glass bottles around because I am afraid they will break when I inevitably drop them, so maybe I will use this flask to transport beer during Wies’n – the most fun it will ever have in all of its lives.
The Blue Flask: Postscript
The blue flask/dream incident last week was one of a series of very strange things that have happened to me this year, so though it was “haunting,” I didn’t freak out. While I was in the library, I remembered suddenly that I wanted to check out The Author of Himself, the autobiography of Marcel Reich-Ranicki. I got the book and have been reading it instead of packing. On Friday it was reported that Ranicki had died after a long illness.
by Jean Marie Carey | 20 Aug 2013 | Art History, Franz Marc, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL
Postkarte am Bubi, Franz Marc and Auguste Macke, 1911. This looks like mostly AM really. I love the way the feathers become the fish…
“We actually had many more exciting exchanges back-and-forth, most of which were very unproductive and very unbecoming of two grown men.” LÖL.
by Jean Marie Carey | 23 May 2013 | Dogs!, Italian Greyhounds, LÖL, MVV / MVG Hunde von München
It’s been a little while and in fact there is a backlog of photos in waiting. This amazing creature cannot wait though, so here he is. Black whippets are rare, and a self-colored black whippet rarer still. I know there are more self-colored sighthounds in the EU than the US, but I haven’t seen any, probably because it is too cold for them to come out. This dark-haired hound was almost glowing in the rare patch of sunlight…I was already on the tram and the dog was waiting for the tram on the other side of the street, and when I got off at the next stop and walked back was already gone. I hope I see him again!
12:28 23 May 2013, Hohenzollernplatz, Trams 12 & 27, Metrobus 53.
by Jean Marie Carey | 20 May 2013 | Art History, German Expressionism / Modernism, LÖL, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
Should We Go In?
I have followed Kunstraum München for some time and now that I’m here have been eager to investigate, a plan somewhat impeded by the Verein’s tendency to announce events through the city (which supports the venue/group for contemporary art and criticism – its 40th anniversary is this year) i.e. a bit slowly, and sporadically through a social media platform owned by someone with the initials MZ I do not often participate in (more on social media at the end), and also since I am often busy on the Wednesdays when meetings and lectures take place.
In any case being free on Pfingstenmontag allowed a friend visiting from Brussels and I to haunt tonight’s talk „Warum im Kollektiv?“ by members of Hamburg’s 8. Salon. Visually this also served as a near-to-closing reception for the Mahlergruppe Austellung Of Two Minds (the actual end date is 26 May). You can see some Mahlergruppe work on its low-key Website. The emphasis on group (founded in 2008 at Munich’s Akademie der Bildenden Künste) and the lack of artists’ statements and biographies is very refreshing, and the powerful graphite-and-acrylic bilder – somewhere between drawings and paintings, are, to me distinctively Munchneresque.
Of Two Minds also includes a sculpture, Bellestar, a craft of formed and draped corrugated framing, and a few photographs of Zurich’s “Needle Park,” circa the 1980s and 1990s at the beginning and then height of needle-borne infection. Of Two Minds isn’t a conceptually straightforward rumination on dystopia, though. Perhaps as the name implies it asks about how we remember these types of weirdly hermetic thought/images that may or may not be indexical. (Of course for Americans the first thing that comes to mind is Al Pacino’s laconic junkie in Panic in Needle Park, the film school staple from 1971.) Thinking about how much Zurich has changed in the past decades doesn’t diminish these images which aren’t exactly memories, though they do form the strong impression of something personally experienced (another film analogy would be the impression of Marseille and Brest from The French Connection and Querelle, though the French coastal cities haven’t been like that in … forever, and were already “not like that” when Genet was writing and Fassbinder and Friedkin were filming).
(more…)
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