Category: Switzerland
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Lightness of being
Lightness of being In last week’s post I touched upon the innovative art of Mondrian, De Stijl and Bauhaus in the first half of last century and I mentioned their impact on abstract art and modern design.At a friend’s house in Geneva I once saw the coffee table of the picture. Impressed by its clever…
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Cedrus libani
Cedrus libani “Spring is beautiful everywhere, but it is most beautiful in Lebanon. It is a spirit that roams round the earth but hovers over Lebanon, conversing with Kings and Prophets … repeating with the Holy Cedars of Lebanon the memory of ancient glory.” (Khalil Gibran)And after the ravages of war and other calamities, for…
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Shutter pig
Shutter pig It’s only an outline, the sawn out pig itself is gone.We look at an empty space, the negative form of a pig.So true to life that we see its round, fat body in front of us. Photo of the week: Shutter pig, Solalex, Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland 2021
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Cors des Alpes
Cors des Alpes A concert with two alpine horns and two accordions in an old Hydro Power Plant in the Rhône, where the river flows out of Lake Geneva. Very original, as for the music, the instruments and the location.The musicians played arrangements of old baroque compositions and more recent pieces specially composed for these…
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Someone was here
Someone was here A riverbed, a row of stones.Each stonea freak of nature.The row of stones– picked out, laid down –a freak of man. Photo of the week: Riverbed, Solalex, Switzerland 2020
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Wet dream
Wet dream The young man dreams of a good catch. Only when looking more closely at the painting we see what kind of fish he actually hopes to hook up with. Sweet dreams of youth. Photo of the week: “Rêves de jeunesse” (1894) by the Swiss painter Luigi Rossi, Musée d’Art et Histoire, Genève, Switzerland…
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He who laughs last, laughs best
He who laughs last, laughs best “There was a time when the staging of skeletons of the saints, installed in astonishing postures, was intended to defy death and to show victorious martyrs, therefore to vivify the faith of believers. Each parish had to have a recumbent figure, or at least relics of saints, often taken…
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Sainte Quintienne
Sainte Quintienne The nuns of Montorge didn’t make only wax heads of angels (see last week’s post), also of saints, preferably saints that had come to a violent end while defending their Faith. The nuns would meticulously carve and paint the wounds on the pale faces of the martyrs, showing the suffering they had gone…
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Wax twosome
Wax twosome Two women’s wax heads waiting to be completed with a wealth of hair and a long dress. And then to become flying angels or maybe even the Virgin Mary. But that was in the 18th or 19th century when they were fabricated by the nuns of Montorge. With their wry mouths, I wouldn’t…
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Flesh
Flesh Is this then what became of man after the expulsion from paradise? (See last week’s post). A pile of flesh on what looks more like a table than a bed. Edmondson nicely calls his painting ‘Sleeping Arrangements’. We can recognize some human limbs, but can’t easily make out to which body they belong. We…