Haus der Kunst

Very nice place to spend an afternoon in.

Highlight was the Wilhelm Sasnal exhibition. Very powerful images and sensations. Three paintings have made a deep impression on me (specially the last one), but there were others which were quite interesting too. They're all oil on canvas.

Kacper und Anka (2009) 

Bathers at Asnières (2010)

 Kacper (2009)

Astray

Funny how this picture of Munich's National Theatre got suck somewhere in my camera...found it this morning.

Visionary unheard

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. [...] I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."

Thomas Edison, (amongst others) inventor (1847-1931)
 

Nocturnal trompe-l'oeil

The dead of night’s curtain

Which I thought was pulled down

Lets the cool, white darkness in

Thousand-year-old Catch-22

"Cross it, and trouble lies ahead.
Do not cross, and still you're trouble-bound.
Truly a troublous place
Is the Ford of Shikasuga."

Attributed to Lady Nakatsukasa (912?-991?)


Found in As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, sort of diary/notebook/travelogue written by an anonymous Japanese woman in the 11th Century, translated by Ivan Morris, note 42, p 118 (Penguin Classics, 1975)


PS: I know I put this poem under the Tanka section, but really I can't come up with the 'Waka' tag just for this one...especially since waka is the former name for tanka.

Link

This is a very interesting site on the art of Sesshū Tōyō, famous Japanese painter (1420-1506). The site is in Italian, though. Enjoy!

Budd's eye

Nasu-no-Yoichi
Saw Buddha behind the fan
The Spring breeze its breath

Quiet day in Munich

Before anything, the captions have been on the last two posts...at long last.

My weekend here in Munich, with one of my friends, was nothing short of hectic. My first beer festival (starkbeirfest - stout beer festival) was grandiose. Munich's night life is quite diversified, generously sprinkled with beer.

Today was way quieter: long, long walk in the Englischer Garten, occasionally pausing now and then to read from Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. I meant to read this book for a long time, but it is difficult to find, and my stumbling on it in one of Camden Town's second-hand bookshops (the one inside the market - there's another one quite away from the crowds, which is equally good) was a godsend. To top it all, it's a first UK edition (1966), only very slightly foxed.

Also, I got to see a downy woodpecker (see pictures below, underneath the Chinesischer Turm). I'm sure it was a specimen of downy (which is more spotted than the hairy woodpecker), and a female one (no red spot behind the head). I couldn't take the male because it was higher up in another tree, and this one proved difficult to catch: she was climbing around the tree as I was going around it, always keeping out of my sight. I eventually proved too cunning for her.

Chinesischer Turm, Englisher Garten

Thank God Spring is here...I was in great need of heliotherapy.

Munich II

"Either follow Jesus Christ and go to Paradise, or be like a puppet of the Devil and go to Hell!"

Seen on the wall of a church.

(My translation...)

Detail on a tombstone set in the Western outer wall of Alter Peter

All of the above are pictures of Asamkirche, Asam's Church (aka St Johann Nepomuk). Easy-to-miss, tiny church (from the outside). The interior is well, nothing short of grandiose.

My apologies for those pictures, taken in the Alte Pinakothek, but the lighting there is quite poor and very badly designed. Cherry on top: they have kept the old glass panes over the paintings (nowadays they only use antireflective glass)

Munich I

I know you can't see much, but right at the centre of the pictures, there is a grey mass. It's a hawk, busy playing with food (in that case, a mouse). I was reading on a bench in the English Garden, and I could hear squealing and leaves rustling, but couldn't see anything. It took me a while to figure out what was happening not five feet behind me.

Three pictures above were taken in the Theatinerkirche

Inside the small square of the Neues Rathaus (New town hall)

View of the tower from the square

Tower, but viewed from Marienplatz

Same, but different.

From Marienplatz, Heilig Geist Kirche in the background

Detail from a tombstone set in the wall of the Heilig Geist Kirche

Alter Peter Kirche ("Old Peter's Church", but really it's St Peter's church)

Remains of St Munditia (Christian martyr, beheaded with a hatchet in 310 AD).

Patron saint of single and unmarried women.

House on Rindermarkt

Frauenkirche - black marble memorial grave of Prince Elector Kurfürst Maximilan I

Frauenkirche, front

Two memorials in one! The statue honours the Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594) on Promenadeplatz. 

At the foot of the memorial is, well, a makeshift votive altar honouring the late Michael Jackson (he apparently stayed in a hotel across the street when he came to Munich, that's why the fans picked this location, otherwise I really can't see any common point between Orlande and Michael). 

The aptly-named Obelisk, on Karolinenplatz. Designed by Leo von Klenze, court architect to King Ludwig I. Erected in 1833, it honours the 30,000 Bavarian soldiers who gave their lives in Napoleon's 1812 campaign against Russia. It's 29 meters high and, much like the lions on Trafalgar Square which were melted from Napoleon's cannonballs, the metal plates on it were melted from weapons of the Turkish army taken during the Battle of Navarino.

Glyptothek, on Königsplatz

Staatliche Antikensammlungen, on Königsplatz

Propyläen, still on Königsplatz

Same as in Bern!

Lawn behind the Alte Pinakothek (Old Painting Gallery)

University of Television and Film

Pinakothek der Moderne

Tidbits 1...

...2...

...and 3!