Museum Jaunt: Ernst Kirchner

Tags

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, España, Expressionism, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain

View of Basel and the Rhine. 1921.

Expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner loved naked women, and the Nazis made him feel very guilty for it.  Earlier in his artistic career, his bohemian studio was apparently a regular Sodom and Gomorrah, with models on standby for candid poses and more realistic renditions. He led a lifestyle that purposely broke from social conventions, with frequent nudity, casual sex, and I’d like to think there was some absinthe in there somewhere, just to complete the bohemian fantasy.  But his later disillusionment with “modern life”,

Potsdamer Platz. 1914.

precipitated by his experiences in war, seemed to develop a more existential self, a view of the beauty of the world in more forms than bars, boobs, and a raised middle finger. And towards the end of his painting career, he painted mostly mountain scenes, snowy landscapes, and other enthralling subjects.

Three Models, Nude in the Studio.

Expressionism is characterized by its tendency to exaggerate and accentuate ideas and reality for emotional effect. And it has been, by the way, at least a loose label of some of the icons of humanity: Nietzsche, poet Walt Whitman, Dostoyevsky, Edvard Munch (The Scream), Van Gogh, and Sigmund Freud. Kirchner helped, if not founded, the development of German Expressionism with his group of intellectuals called Die Brücke, or “The Bridge.”  Their manifesto was built around the idea of dismissing tradition (“older, established forces” ) as restraints on humanity and creativity.  Their first collective exhibition was, surprisingly,  on the theme of the female nude.

Naked Playing People. 1910

It may be no surprise that such a progressive, yet sensitive pleasure seeker returned from his military service in the first World War in the throes of a nervous breakdown.  He was discharged early and spent two years in sanatoriums. He painted a dark self-portrait with an amputated hand.  But his reputation grew in the circles that mattered, i.e. art connoisseurs and studios in Germany and Switzerland, and he seemed to come into his own after he stopped painting his best work.  But in the 1930′s, under the laughable moral authority of the Nazis, he was labeled a degenerate, and was “asked” for his resignation from the Berlin Academy of Arts.  Over 600 of his paintings and prints were confiscated (a euphemism for destroyed. This kind of thing happened a lot then).  In 1938, he killed himself.

I can only interpret his suicide as a default response to the unexpected trauma of war, coupled with the destruction of his art.  I can think of fewer worse things to happen to a person.

Room in the Tower (Self-portrait). 1913.

*          *          *

Fundación MAPFRE is holding Kirchner’s exhibition until 2 September.

Where: Fundación MAPFRE Recoletos: Paseo de Recoletos 23 – Madrid – 28004

Metro Line 4 (Colón) and Line 2 (Banco de España)

When: Monday 14:00- 22:00

Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 – 20:00

Sunday and Holidays 11:00 – 19:00

How much: FREE

The Earliest Memory

Tags

May 18 1980, Mount St Helens, Volcano, Washington

Thirty-two years ago, in the northwestern US state of Washington, the previously dormant volcano Mt. St Helens erupted. For me, it is an early memory that has been reduced to a vague recollections and second-hand accounts.  What survives are images, like faded sepia-colored slides in my mind.  I remember understanding that something very large was happening, something that reached beyond the scope of my pre-adolescent perspective.  Maybe this was the first time I began to think of the world as a large place.  I looked at maps to trace the ash clouds, which reached up to 15 miles into the atmosphere, and were carried in trace amounts around the world.  The shock waves from the eruption were recorded in New York state.  After a scale 5.1 earthquake, over 20 square miles of earth broke of the mountain, creating the largest landslide in recorded history.

Most of the actual events I don’t remember:  the evacuations, the Columbia River blocked with thousands of trees blown over from the blast, the old man who refused to evacuate from his cabin next to the mountain, playing in the ash that fell from the darkened sky. Most of the what I know now comes from the collected knowledge of news stories, documentary footage, and stories.

The clearest memory I have is similar to the photos below, although from a greater distance.  We stopped the car to see a symmetrical cone with a streaming column of ash and smoke rising into the sky, and it left a permanent impression. And it marked the beginning of a life-long interest in natural disasters.

Mt. St. Helens, WA, May 18, 1980 — Disasters are devastating to the natural and man-made environment. FEMA provides federal aid and assistance to those who have been affected by all types of disaster. NOAA News Photo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

May 18, 1980.

Videos:

Mt. St Helens Documentary

 Mt. St. Helens Eruption, May 18, 1980.

Related articles

• Mount St. Helens: NASA Releases Time-Lapse Video Before and After Destruction (inquisitr.com)
• Mount St. Helens Blows Its Top (May 18-23, 1980) (thestarryeye.typepad.com)
• May 18, 1980 | Mount St. Helens Volcano Erupts (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)

Gran Vía, Primavera.

Tags

España, Gran Vía, Madrid, Puerta del Sol, Spain, travel

 A few new shots from around Gran Vía, as the weather has warmed up to the low 30′s (88+)…

*          *          *

Notes on elaborate slaughter

Tags

bullfighting, Las Corridas, Las Ventas, Madrid, Spain, Ventas

With yesterday’s outing to the beautiful stadium Ventas fresh in my mind, I’ve spent the day going over my own notes, trying to piece together an objective article on las corridas, or the bullfight, and it has proven to be a surprisingly stimulating challenge.  I have grown to be suspicious of my own prejudices, deeply rooted as they may be, and oftentimes what makes one uncomfortable is what one should investigate, if not confront directly.

My interests lie in the motivations and sensibilities of the “aficionados,” bizarre and unjustified as they may appear, and in a uniquely Spanish tradition that brings to the surface such diametrically opposed opinions.  There is blood, screaming, prancing men in tights, cigar smoke, swords, stifling heat, appalling apathy, and horses with blinders and coats of weaved armor.

Here are a few shots I took yesterday evening.  A beautiful beginning to true Spring and the festivals of San Isidro.

Plaza de Toros, Las Ventas, Madrid.

My Lonely Chateau Margaux (Repost from June 18, 2010)

Tags

Bordeaux, Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, Chateau Dauvac Margaux, Château Margaux, Food & Conversation, Food & Wine, food and drink, France, Pinot Noir, travel, wine

In September of 1992, in the duty-free section of ferry-boat freshly departed from Rosslare, Ireland, I bought a bottle of wine.  Already buzzed from the romance and contrived sentimentality of a backpacker’s trip in Europe and excited by our arrival in France, I decided to splurge on a 1982 Chateau Dauzac Margaux.  I, of course, did not know Chateau Margaux from Bartles & James. I took a stab in the vintner’s dark, chose something on the shelf second from the top, and packed it away in my Lowe Alpine backpack.  I don’t remember how much I paid for it, but at the time it seemed like a lot, especially for a newly graduated high school student who hadn’t even discovered the horrors of Lucky Lager beer and peppermint schnapps. But I still suspected it was something special that I was not ready to appreciate.

To its credit, this bottle of French pride has endured hardships.  Since that smiley, sunny day in Cherbourg (sans umbrellas), it has quietly experienced, without consent, three winters of harsh neglect in sub-arctic Fairbanks, Alaska, as well as the rainy dreariness of Kenai and Anchorage.  It has been subjected to the dry Utah desert air, the bumps and temperature changes of many road trips in a Volkswagen Beetle, and the unacceptable heat of an Arizona summer.  It’s been rained on. It has been dropped in a sink and on various floor surfaces, like linoleum and brown stain-free carpet.  It’s had hot gravy spilled on it.  It has been stored in a humid storage unit in Ocean Beach, California for two 1-year stints (where it lives currently, upside down, in a box). It was tossed around and nearly consumed by a group of rowdy teenagers.  Simply, this French gem has lived in seven zip codes of cruel, American neglect.

Today it occurred to me that I have not had a material possession longer that this bottle of wine.  All the electronics toys, books, furniture, cars, clothes, laptops, CDs, and all the other tchotchka that one collects, they have come and gone, and with the common apathy and attention deficit of a spoiled materialistic child of the 1st-world.  It has survived six girlfriends, and more than a few light-hearted flings (ok, fine–just a few). It looks tired and aged.

Possibly, the lasting relationship between this bottle and me is a testament to my own appreciation for food and drink. Maybe I have been holding on to this wine as a little symbol of how I imagine my life should be, or for an evening of some romantic experience in which this bottle is part of a catharsis after a building frustration of mediocrity, or maybe I am just an indecisive idiot, afraid of committment.

Chateau Dauzac has produced wine classified as “one of eighteen Cinquièmes Crus (Fifth Growths) in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855“.  Our bottle of Chateau Dauzac Margaux is ranked fifth in quality in a list of five types of wine, but these wines made it through as the best of what France had to offer at the time, and the Official Classification has only changed twice since 1855.  To some, this is just more evidence of the rigid, conservative French culinary attitude. But any way you slice it (or pour it, in this case), this wine is bad-ass.

The maturing age of this bottle is apparently 18 – 20 years, which makes its heyday somewhere around 2001, while I was pacing the streets of São Paulo, rushing to my next private business English class, reeling in my hanging tongue in front of the herds of beautiful Paulista women, and getting sunburned and drinking caipirinhas in Guarujá.  I have always known the right time to drink this wine, and I have harbored the guilt of its neglect back deep in the place where I keep all my writing material for self-loathing and pity.  I do not know enough about wine to actually anticipate what this bottle will now taste like when or if it is ever opened.  I know that I will have ready, along with a bowl of raw spinach leaves, pine nuts, arugula and iceberg lettuce, the best damn bottle of olive oil I can find, just in case it has turned to vinegar.

Because I am at once a fatalistic cynic and a romantic, I have imagined the ideal scenario in which this bottle of wine should be truly enjoyed and appreciated, but don’t really believe it will ever take place. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that there are no dudes, beer pong games or chicken wings in this fantasy.

Twice I have been tempted, deep in bouts of self-pity, to open the damn thing and get it over with, cork screw in hand, like Miles in the movie Sideways, gulping his Pinot Noir out of a styrofoam cup at a fast food restaurant.  But each time I came to realize, as a small epiphany, some of what is valuable and what is not.  Wine is a social drink, and it doesn’t seem to taste as good when drunk alone.  It is best enjoyed spontaneously, when friends suddenly appear and everyone is caught in a haze of conversation and excitement about life.  And when one takes an inventory of these types of life occurrences, there are never too many; sadly there are usually not enough. I can only speak for myself, but too much of life has been eaten up in the business of living, in getting the adult chores done each day, in resting on the sofa in exhaustion from work, in sitting around and bitching about dead-end jobs or annoying people on the other end of the political spectrum.

So let’s call this expensive, never-ending bottle of wine a catalyst, a symbol in waiting, a token giving impetus to some future gathering of friends.  As a piece of old-world quality, it at least deserves to be presented in an environment of smart, happy words and laughs, coming from the mouths of people who enjoy the company of one another. Here’s to hanging out and living in the moment.

Ching, ching…