Wednesday afternoon I was reading a book on a bench by the canal, waiting for my neighbor to get back from the playground with his kids so I could get back into my apartment. And this guy came over and asked me if I could take a picture, because the self-timer on their camera was broken. I mean, what else was I doing, right? Sure, I can push a camera button.
So the guy (Andreas) and his friend (Peter) told me they were recreating the cover art from Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. They’d already taken the picture on the back cover, of Simon and Garfunkel in front of a chain link fence, and they’d been trying and trying to get the front cover one right. They were dressed like them and everything, in jackets from the thrift store with the tags still on. (Before every series of pictures they had to grab the tags and hide them again.)
Why were they doing this? Yes, that was my question, too. It turns out they’re artists, and the photos are for the covers of the catalog for an exhibit they’re doing in Munich later this year. The project: They wrote a song for each of five shopping malls around Berlin, then performed the songs at the malls, while videoing their performances and their interactions with security and whatnot.
I feel like this is the kind of experience you come to Berlin to have: helping random strangers create the exhibition catalog about their run-ins with mall cops. So it’s a good thing they found me, two days before I leave town. They were super nice and we had a half-hour or so photo shoot by the canal.
I really hope they use one of my pictures. They said they’ll send me a copy of the catalog, which is, of course, a songbook. Sing-along party at my house!
On Friday I finally made it down to the National Gallery to see the Pompeii exhibit. I visited Pompeii in the summer of 1998, and it was really cool – lots of halfway-standing houses to run around in – but hardly any of the artifacts are at the site. So I was excited to actually see the stuff, and it’s lovely. Lots of marble portraits, some frescoes, a funny set of frolicking bronze animals.
It turns out the Romans were really into their fish. The exhibit had a little corner on seafood – a couple of frescoes and a reproduction of a mosaic with fish, octopus, and so on. But that stuff wasn’t just for eating. From the text on the wall:
Many proprietors of villas owned fishponds that provided a ready supply of oysters and other delicacies. Private fishponds were a status symbol that was pursued to absurd lengths. Cicero complained of senators who lavished more attention on their mullets than on affairs of state. Anecdotes tell of villa owners treating their fish as pets, adorning their favorites with jewels and gold rings and weeping over their deaths.
You have to love the Romans. They didn’t mess around. They were just straight up decadent. The exhibit closes March 22nd and will be at the L.A. County Museum of Art from May to October.
Photo credit: me, 1998.
Here’s a follow-up to my Munch post:
I visited the Munch Museum on my February 2007 trip to Norway, and just didn’t feel like I could pass up a piece of Scream cake. (Norwegian lesson of the day: skrik = scream; kake = cake. You’re welcome.)
The AAAS journalism awards reception is always a good show. This year’s party was at the Art Institute of Chicago. The highlight was a temporary exhibition on Edvard Munch. You know him – he did the Scream. He was Norwegian, and generally remembered as nutso. He did have problems with anxiety and misery and whatnot, but the exhibit argues that he was a lot more complicated and interesting than the caricature of the suffering artist. They put Munch’s art in the context of contemporaries, from Norway and beyond.
Friend and fellow science writer Erik asked, astutely, if we’d be looking at Munch’s art if it weren’t for the Scream being so famous. I think a curator at a major art museum probably wouldn’t have been allowed to mount a big Munch exhibit if it weren’t for the Scream. Without the Scream, he might not have been famous enough to get tagged with a stereotype. But I still think he was pretty great and worth devoting an exhibit to.
I think the later work won Erik over, too – the first few rooms were less Munch-y, as he messed around with Impressionism and other stuff that didn’t really suit him. It reminded me of something I read recently about genius being the ability to be most like yourself. I really like Munch after he settled down and started making Munch-like art. His earlier stuff – eh.
Check out the Art Institute’s website for the exhibit. These are some of my favorites. Makes me want to go back to Oslo and see the Munch Museum again!
