Hannah Swithinbank

Why I like the Wallraf-Richartz Museum.

Point 1: It has art in it that I understand, unlike the Museum Ludwig, which I went to on Thursday.  I do *try* with modern art nowadays, I really do, but honestly at some point my mind just reaches a breaking point and it normally involves random objects being scattered on the floor of the art gallery.

So, that gets the modern art bashing out of the way up front. I’m just more comfortable with art up to the early C20th, and definitely with stuff that involves a canvas or something similar hung on a wall (and sculpture, more generally).  But also the Wallraf-Richartz is nicely laid out, with a broad collection and really good introductionary panels to each room in German and English, plus little computer screens and headphones installed in the seats in each room that give you more information on specific works  – they’re in German only, but you know what – I was good with the wall signage.  Hurrah for explaining the context of the works and all that.

They’ve also got a couple of really good exhibitions on at the moment – they started yesterday and run to January, which is why I waited till today to go to this museum.  The first is called ‘Mit Napoleon in Ägypten, and showcases the Museum’s collection of sketches of Egypt’s temples by Jean-Baptiste Lepère, who was a French architect and egyptologist who went on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 (y’know, the one where they found the Rosetta Stone).  The exhibition showcases the (fanatastically stunning)sketches and their reproduction as engravings for publication, and discusses the beginnings of Egyptology as a scholarly pursuit and the French expedition as a whole. And it’s really really good.

The other is a showcase of Van Gogh’s Boots (right), which they have displayed on its own in a room, and contextualised with excerpts from the critical debate about the importance of the painting – specifically essays by Heidegger, Shapiro and Derrida.  Fundamentally, it’s a meditation upon aesthetics and the meaning of art, but it’s really nicely done, and it doesn’t presume any knowledge of either the art of the criticism. I was completely engaged without feeling patronised, so yay for the Wallraf-Richartz.

And, my gosh, next up is an exhibition of Stradivari violins, including concerts. It would be bliss to go to them all, if only I came into a couple of thousand euros. €150 a ticket PER CONCERT. But you get champagne, so that’s ok, right?  That won’t make me hate them.

Oh Man.

Please tell me that this is not the new England shirt. I adore the sight of Paul Sackey scoring tries, but I’m not sure that I adore that shirt. Please tell me that it’s just a change strip because the Pacific Islanders were in white. Please. It looks like an Arsenal shirt. Ugh.

In other news, Spain is lots of nice things. Among other stuff, the hot chocolate is amazing, clearly, and the food is all kinds of good things. I have been taking lots’n'lots of pictures, as ever, but I forgot my camera cable, and so ye cannae see any of them till I get home on Wednesday. Or as my father said, “So the world can expect a deluge of Madrid photos then, can it?” Well, just my world. I very much doubt refugees in the DRC will be paying attention.

I have been to Toledo, and Segovia, where I managed not to hug the aqueduct, and to Salamanca, where I found the frog on the carved front of the university and therefore will clearly be getting married in the next 12 months, as that’s apparently what I get for finding the frog. Whoopeeeee. I have also played in the three main art galleries, and discovered that I am ok with modern art up until about the middle of the twentieth century, and then I start going, ‘ugh’ or ‘hmm, I do doodle like that in Friday seminars.’ Early Miro, good. Late Miro, well, I don’t dislike it, but I don’ understand how it qualifies as art. And some of the other stuff in the Reina Sofia. Just ugh. But the second floor stuff, the early twentieth century, I liked that. And Guernica is most impressive, and looks quite different when you actually see it full-on in HUGE size, rather than in poster-size on your roommate’s half of the wall. I liked the Thyssen-Bornemisza best though – despite being completely unable to pronounce it. Lots of lovely things, including Kandinsky, and a very very lovely Pissarro, which is a sibling of the Pissaro I adored in the RA’s ‘From Russia’ exhibit, and which I cannot even find a postcard of anywhere. It is Rue Saint-Honore: Rain Effect, on the right. I love love love it. (The other is Avenue de l’Opera: Snow Effect, apparently it lives in St Petersburg most of the time.) Apart from the contents – which did also include a fab exhibition called 1914! The Great War and the Avant-Gard – the museum itself is just so pretty. Yay for pretty museum architecture.

Finally, of course, I did follow the US election, completely failing to sleep properly, because I am that kind of person (the kind of person who stays in the same location watching a sporting event if the supported entity is doing well, because clearly it brings luck), and ended up checking the web at 5.30 am in time to catch McCain’s concession speech. Big yays from me for Obama winning, clearly. And now I’m following the transition a bit, and being very amused that after the Obama-being-like-Santos-who-was-based-on-Obama West Wing tale, Rahm Emanuel, who was apparently an inspiration for Josh Lyman in the West Wing, has been appointed Chief of Staff, which is the job Josh ended up with in the Santos administration. I am focusing on this amusment in an attempt to remain in denial about the fact that I find Emanuel oddly attractive…