The week flew past!

The days are still filled with one-off stuff so they go by fast. Hopefully this will slow down sometime soon.

SATURDAY
Foggy! Worked around the house, then we went for a bike ride later afternoon. Afterwards, we went farther down the street to a video store and signed up. We rented ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’, what a hoot! And we found a great Italian restaurant: Mario’s on Adalbertstrasse. Good pizza!

SUNDAY
On Sunday the 9th, I went to visit a museum and Logan went to Stockholm, again for work. His trip went well. Mine was great – I went to see the Hilla von Rebay exhibit at the Villa Stuck museum. This plus another art event this week (more later on) really opened my eyes to the art scene in Munich.

The exhibit is called “Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim”, the first exhibition dedicated to the entire career of Hilla Rebay (1890-1967), one of the founders of the Guggenheim Museum in 1939, and its first curator and director.

Hilla was an artist in the early 20th century, one of the first ‘non-objective’ artists. ‘n-o’ means not painting from an object, but from the feelings and emotions. She studied here in Munich, ended up in NYC doing art, part of which was portraiture, painted Solomon Guggenheim’s portrait. During those sessions, she convinced him that he should be collection non-objective art. And what is now the Guggenheim Museum in NYC was born. Details from the Guggenheim site:

An accomplished artist who studied in Munich, Berlin, and Paris, Hilla Rebay embraced the idea of "non-objective" art as both an aesthetic style and a manifestation of spirituality. She began to exhibit at the age of 22 in Cologne, and was subsequently introduced to the avant-garde in Berlin, where she was drawn to the work of the modernists who exhibited at that city's Galerie Der Sturm, including Arp, Bauer, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Richter, and Schwitters.

After Rebay moved to America in 1927, she was commissioned by Solomon R. Guggenheim to paint his portrait and began her mission to encourage him to collect the non-objective art she so fervently supported. Rebay introduced Guggenheim to Kandinsky, and with her encouragement he purchased more than 150 of the artist's works as well as paintings by other abstract and non-objective artists, including Bauer, Albert Gleizes, Luger, and Laszl Moholy-Nagy.

In 1937 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established, and Rebay and Guggenheim envisioned the construction of a museum to house his magnificent collection of modern art. In 1939 Guggenheim rented a building on East 54th Street in New York, which Rebay transformed into a temporary exhibition space, called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting; in 1947 it would move to a townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue. A fiercely independent woman of impressive energy, Rebay organized a series of traveling exhibitions devoted to the collection as well as exhibitions at the museum and continued to advise Guggenheim on the purchase of works. In 1943 Rebay contacted architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whom she perceived to be a kindred spirit, to design the museum of her dreams, "a temple to non-objectivity," which would finally open in 1959. By that time, Wright and Guggenheim had already passed away and Rebay had retired from the museum.

The extraordinary collaboration between Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim resulted in one of the world's finest collections of early twentieth-century modernism. This accomplishment was expressed in particular through Art of Tomorrow, the opening exhibition at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which introduced key works from Guggenheim's collection to a New York audience in 1939. The present exhibition will showcase over 30 important works by the artists that Guggenheim first collected under Rebay's guidance, and which were included in the Art of Tomorrow catalogue published for the opening of the museum, thus attesting to the prescience of the institution's founders and the historical importance of the collection today. Some 40 photos, sketchbooks, historic exhibition catalogues, and miscellaneous publications relating to Rebay's work and the exhibitions she organized at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting will also be on view.

After New York, the exhibition travels to Schlossmuseum Murnau and Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, in Germany and will be shown simultaneously in two parts from September 8, 2005 to January 15, 2006. Rebay's early life and career in Europe will be the focus of the presentation in Murnau, while her life and career in the United States after she moved to New York in 1927 and a selection of works in Solomon Guggenheim's collection at the time of the 1939 exhibition Art of Tomorrow will be featured in Munich. After the Bavarian venues, the exhibition travels to Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin from May 4 to July 30, 2006.


Non-objective art. Kandinsky. Bauer, humph. I do not like it on the wall. I would not like it in the hall. I would not want it in my home, nor to illustrate a tome. It’s very personal, you see; and it does not strike a chord in me.

BUT this visit was cool to the 10th – Alex was the one who’d organized it. You may recall from past reading here that she taught art history in NYC. To visit a museum with her is a wonderful experience. She knows much, loves to share it and knows all kinds of fun back stories. The other thing that was so great, is Hilla’s collage art. She was much taken with the non-objectivists, and painted in that style. I see those paintings as very studied and unfinished. “Let’s see, I’ll put a swoosh over here to balance out the black rectangle and the purple blob and I’ve filled the canvas so I’m done.” But her collages – oh, man, are they beautiful. Intricate, complete and striking.

That night, I went to Eva & Glenn’s for dinner. (Eva was the third person on the museum tour.) She cooked a great meal. And afterwards, we watched ER! So exciting. Glenn showed me through Bit Torrent, so I kind of know what to do to download American TV. And they gave me some DVDs with shows they’ve already watched.

MONDAY
Today I worked on the computer in the morning. In the afternoon, I set off on an expedition – to go visit Gayle in Ottobrun. I had completed her collateral – 4 ‘aftercare’ sheets for her treatments, and a new set of business cards. (Took some doing, too – the graphics would not print out as they were on screen. I had 2 computers going on Sunday – the Windows laptop with Illustrator, turning the graphics into a PDF, and the Mac which is hooked up to the printer, to print test runs on scrap sheets.)

It took 2 U-bahn lines & a bus to get there, but I made it! Gayle & I talked all afternoon. I got to meet Breeze, her cat. And I got a reflexology treatment, in kind for my services. Great deal!


TUESDAY
Had planned to meet a friend at the movies. Jean, with whom I’m now playing badminton, wanted to see Willie Wonka. We met with 2 other women at 11:00 for the matinee. Johnny Depp was channeling Michael Jackson for this role. It was an eerie, and otherworldly, out-of-touch performance. The movie was OK, but I missed the Oompa-Loompa song. Depp’s makeup & character, plus the score by Danny Elfman reminded us all of Edward Scissorhands.

That afternoon, I wandered in the neighborhood walking down streets I’d not been on before. I needed to get out & move and it was good therapy. Went to the cash machine (always fun) and found a bookstore with a few English books (bigger fun). Returned home in a better frame of mind.

AND – from one of the disks that I borrowrd from Eva, was able to watch current ‘Gilmore Girls’ and ‘West Wing’. This was such a treat – even watching on the computer it was absolutely soul saving. So I’ve figured out how to turn .avi files into something that QuickTime can play. Next, I need to get plugged in so I can download the shows I want.

WEDNESDAY
Wednesday was the monthly IWC meeting. It was the 15th anniversary of the club. We had a party – cake & Sekt (dry sparkling wine). Everyone who runs an activity got up & spoke about it and of course the meeting went late. Some of the folks prepared skits for their activity, it was fun to see.

That night, I met Gayle & Dawn at the Odesonplatz U-bahn stop. We were going to the weekly curry night, organized by the Toytown crowd. Gayle had asked Ema, from her language course, to join us, and Ema got a bit lost. We hopped the train up tot the next stop, spread out to cover all exits from the station, and finally found Ema. We trooped into the restaurant only a little bit late. It was Deeba, on Barerstrasse. Tiny place, our party of 24 took up ¾ of the restaurant. But they rose to the challenge and we had great food. The best Chicken Tikka I have had here – I’ll be going back! Gayle was having so much fun on her first ‘girls night out’ here that she & Ema stayed. Dawn & I headed back as they were following people who had left earlier, to a local bar well-known to the Toytown crowd. Even with leaving “early”, I got home at 11:30.

THURSDAY
Art tour, part deux. At 10:00, a group of women from the IWC meet in front of Munich’s Academie. Art, that is. A guide joined us and toured us through the local neighborhood, describing the art scene in Munich from the 1880s to the first world war. Munich was a happening place for art then (and still, I think.) The Academie was cheap – 70 Deutschemarks per year. Rents were cheap and there were lots of open places to rent. We walked past building where Kandinsky, Franz-Marc, Paul Klee, Thomas Mann and others lived & had studios. Very cool. Even better is that this took place in Schwabing, where I now live!

After the tour, 4 of us went into the city center for lunch. I went grocery shopping on the way back. (I have been advise to never climb the stairs to the apartment empty-handed. It has been good advice!) Got home at about 4:00.

I spent a little time straightening up, and cleaning, because next week – Peri’s coming! Wahoo! Our first visitors. Peri & Brian arrive on Tuesday morning, depart really early Friday morning. I have a gazillion places to take them – I think Peri, being a New Yorker, would like the Hilla von Rebay exhibit. There’s a Franz-Marc special exhibition in town now too. And I have been told that the Alte Pinatkothek (old art museum) rivals the Louvre. Plus there’s city tours, local castles to visit, food to eat and beer to be drunk. Looks like the weather will be wonderful too.

Well, that’s all for today. I realized that it had been a while since I blogged and wanted to get this down before I forgot the details. I have installed Torrent Tomato, a Mac OS X client to pull down media files. Am downloading another Gilmore Girls, but it sure is slow. Hope this will work, though. I want shows that Ewa & Glenn don’t watch.