I Am Imaginary

12 April 2015 (Sunday) - Alte Pinakothek and Neue Pinakothek.  Since it was Sunday, the entrance to the Pinakothek Museums are 1 Euro each.  Hence, I decided to go to both the Old and New Pinakothek.  There is another building, the Modern Pinakothek, but I didn't have enough time to cover it today.  Will leave it till another Sunday!

Lunch was at a Kebap place called Sindbad.  It was along the way from the Theresienstrasse Subway Station to the Alte Pinakothek and the smell that wafted out from the store was too fragrant to resist!  Hence, i bought a delicious warm Doner Kebap to munch along the way.  The weather this week has been very good and along the way there were many couples and families picnicking and relaxing on the fields outside the museums.

The Alte Pinakothek mainly held paintings that were from the 13th to 18th centuries.  I got an audio guide for about 4.50 euros.  At first it felt like the guide was mainly a 看图说话 (i.e. oral examination on the paintings).  But after awhile, I found that the audio guide was able to point out certain unique features of the painting that may have been missed by the untrained eye.  If you are planning to make a trip to the Pinakothek museums, I think its not a must but a good-to-have.

Painting galleries 

One of my favourite pictures depicting a roadmap of Christ's life.
The photos below focus on different parts of the picture.

On the top left hand corner is a scene of Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary on Christ's birth.
On the bottom left hand corner is the birth of Christ and in the middle you see the massacre of
the innocents.

The picture here shows Mother Mary with the Baby Christ and all the wise men who came to visit. 

At the bottom of the picture you see the resurrection of Christ.  

In the background on the top right hand corner you also see Jesus resurrecting Jarius's daughter. 

 One of the many Mother Mary and Christ Pictures

One thing that etched clearly in my mind after visiting the Alte Pinakothek was that a large number of the paintings in the 13th to 18th centuries had biblical references.  For the audience who have little knowledge of the Bible, it may be more difficult to appreciate the history which the art pieces portrayed.

Next, I visited the Neue Pinakothek.  I did not rent the Audio Guide so I can't tell you how much difference that made.  But compared to the Alte Pinakothek, one of the best things about the Neue Pinakothek was that the titles were translated to English.  So it was relatively much easier to understand what the picture was about.  For those who wish to rent the Audio Guide to both museums, there is a combination price of 7 euros.  This means you get to save 2 euros from visiting both museums.

Mother Mary and Christ Picture.  Notice the differences from the paintings above?

Picture of a Munich Biergarten

A close-up of the above

One of the interesting exhibits in the Neue Pinakothek was the "Flowing Transitions".  Due to renovations, some of the old master pieces of the Alte Pinakothek were being presented together with the artworks of the 19th century housed at the Neue Pinakothek.  The following are some of the showcases.

In the past, art tends to be more flamboyant whereas after two generations, the art sets itself apart by taking another direction using more muted colours (like the drawing by Boucher vs. David).

Old: Madame de Pompadour (Francois Boucher)

New: Comtesse de Sorcy (Jacques Louis David)

On the contrary, for the two pictures below, you will notice that the building in van Goyen"s painting creates the impression of blending in organically with the natural surroundings of the countryside (harmonising shades of brown).  Whereas Schinkel's portrays a more melodramatic version of the catherdral.

Old:  Landscape with Church of St. Pancras (Jan Van Goyen) 

New: Catherdral towering over a town (Karl Friedrich Schinkel) 

Then again there are artistic elements that remain constant throughout the years.  Such as the portrayal of mirrors which were associated with the moral context of vanity.

Old: Lady at a Mirror (Frans van Mieris)

New: Sunshine in Home and Heart (Christoffel Bisschop)

A piece that may interest fans of storybooks is "The Fairy Tale of Cinderella" by Moritz von Schwind.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a full landscape photo of the picture.  A strange old man was standing in front of the picture and studying it so intently that it seemed like he totally drowned in it.  Not sure what he saw in that picture...

The art below is famously known as "One Canvas, Two Art".  Apparently, another painting was drawn onto the original painting.  It took an X-radiograph to discover the painting underneath.  Eventually, with a scapel under a stereomicroscope, the painting was painstakingly restored to its original state below.

Sluice Gate in the Optevoz Valley (Charles-Francois Daubigny)

My major takeaway from the Neue Pinakothek was that unlike the Alte Pinakothek, artists in the 19th century tend to prefer to draw scenery / landscape pictures like the ones below.

This created a major problem for 19th century art as it witnessed a dramatic loss of depicted angels.  To prevent the loss of this faith and spirituality in art, God and angels were presented in various creative forms as follows:

Young Woman Sewing by Lamplight (Georg Friedrich Kersting)
Notice the Bible next to the sewing machine?

The Artist's Model in the Break (Fritz von Uhde)
The artist's model is dressed in the form of an angel.

Living Room with the Artist's Sister (Adolph von Menzel)
An angel carving at the doorway at the top right corner of the picture.

Through a modern piece of art, the artist James Lee Byars shared the secret of all angels.  With these three words, which are gold-plated, barely legible and engraved in the stone tablet, he implies that art and artist, beauty and perfection are simply imaginary.  If you look closely, you can barely see the "I am imaginary" in the middle of the stone.

I am imaginary (James Lee Byars)

"I am imaginary" at the centre of the picture

The famous paintings of Van Gogh and Claude Monet were also on exhibit.  I didn't have the audio guide and there was no further explanations anywhere describing the paintings so I wasn't able to ascertain if the paintings were the original or simply a replica.  My guess is that they are just copies and not the real thing.

Plain near Auvers (Vincent van Gogh)

Sunflowers (Vincent van Gogh)

A close-up of Sunflowers

View of Arles (Vincent van Gogh)

Water Lilies (Claude Monet)

Notice the interesting way that artists sign their paintings in the picture below.  Each signature is unique and distinct.

Ploughing (Giovanni Segantini)

Signature of Giovanni Sergantini ("GS") embedded in the stone at the feet of the horse.

The last exhibit was a showcase on how artists viewed themselves in the world.

In the most traditional sense, generally painters do a face self-portrait just like our ID photos.

In this case, the paintress of this work, Marie-Gabrielle Capet, looks directly at the viewer.  She sits next to her teacher Adelaide Labille-Gulard.  Capet claimed her place within the predominantly male art world of Paris around 1800.

Monet painting on his Studio Boat (Edouard Manet)

In Adolph von Menzel's lithographic cycle, the artist's idealistic dreams falling apart due to the harshness of reality is told with a great sense of humour through eleven scenes below.

A young child's first sketches (on the floor...)

Nightly drawing sessions in his father's workshop from which he eventually breaks free

Now as a young artist with long hair, he sketches plaster replicas at the academy

He later starts a family of his own with a maiden beauty

Thus, he is forced to perform arduous work as the family's breadwinner

Finally, the artist's early death is followed by posthumous fame

On the way home, I passed by an ice cream store called Balla Beni Ice Cream.  The queue was super long!  And of course, like any Singaporean I joined the queue (even though I honestly didn't know how good the ice cream is)...  But anyway it was good!  And I only queued for about 15-20 minutes.  (I checked when I was home and apparently, the store is rated 4.5 stars on Yelp.)

Basically you choose your flavours (each flavour is 1.5 euros) and on top of that you get to try any one spoon of ice cream of your preference!  So my choice was "red fruit" and "caramel" plus a spoon of "schokolade" (i.e. chocolate).  The caramel ice cream came with honeycomb and was awesome, so was the chocolate.  The red fruit ice cream was a little sour, so maybe you can give it a miss.

And finally its Spring / Summer!  It was snowing the first week that I arrived, but I am happy to announce that many pink flowers have blossomed on the tree just outside my apartment under the warm sunshine!  Here's to more warm but cool weathers!  Cheers!