Category: Switzerland
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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…
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Paradise lost
Paradise lost As two light shadows, that’s how Bokor lets them disappear in his beautiful painting ‘Expulsion from Paradise’. The shadows are merging with the landscape: they can only just be distinguished from the surrounding nature. Their undefined form fits the pristine, natural state of Adam and Eve at this early phase in the genesis…
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Life
Life Fanciful, moss-grown branches against a variegated background of light green, dancing leaflets. And we, eyed creatures, are getting smashed on the constant feast of nature. Photo of the week: Switzerland 2009
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Up and under
Up and under Above the cloud you can’t see what’s below. And below you can’t see what’s above. It’s good to sometimes take a step aside. Photo of the week: Les Muverans and Villars, Switzerland 2015
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Sol LeWitt No.532
Sol LeWitt No.532 I have paid attention to Sol LeWitt on this blog before. You can see here and here. At the 2016 art fair in Geneva his Wall Drawing 532 was executed for the occasion. A beautiful work and, with its length of 40 meters, impressive too. Recently I saw an interesting film about LeWitt…
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Tableau vivant
Tableau vivant Scene at an art fair – visitors miming gestures as accidental actors in a shadow play unaware of the spatial configurations their poses produce on stage. Photo of the week: Art Genève, Geneva, Switzerland 2015
καιρός remembered 