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Saturday 30 October 2010

In Vino Veritas

A confession to be made: I believe in wine. It relaxes mind, keeps the heart healthy and the conversation smooth. Not a very popular opinion these days, I suppose... When I was five years old I got really sick and fever wouldn’t go away for days. So when I nipped a glass of red wine from the table and drunk it, my exhausted parents didn’t object: in minutes I fell asleep, and after 14 hours woke up healthier than ever. 
 
Paracelsus (a Swiss bloke, by the way) was right, saying: “All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous”. Look at Swiss people: they live long, they are slim, and they are not shying away from wine, definitely knowing their dose...

When we moved to Switzerland three years ago first books I bought were on wine and cheese: I wanted to be up to date with the rest of Helvetians (I am still a little behind on chocolate and kuku clocks though).  My love of wine has always been a little on the consumption side, I never even dreamed to do something with a Production of it. Then we moved to the Swiss countryside (a wine producing region) a couple of years back, and I was invited to harvest grapes for local wine producers. Oh, yeah, a real field study, AND my first crash course in Schwitzerdütsch , a Swiss dialect of German language.

Harvesting grapes in German sounds like “Reading grapes” (Traubenlese). The whole process is done by hand and each grape bunch is carefully inspected (read). There should be no shrivelled, spoiled or rotten berries or bunches; stems should look green, but not overly so, which could otherwise impart unpleasant, harsh tannins to wine. A simple mechanical activity suddenly revealed its complex, sophisticated side... 

The last couple of years were very lucky for the Swiss wine makers, sugar level – the essential indicator – was high, and so were our spirits...
Another essential Swiss thing I learned while harvesting grapes: “Zvieri”. It’s an afternoon snack at 4 p.m., sort of the English five o’clock, only instead of tea and biscuits, you get ham, and cheese, and wine (and then tea and biscuits, if you like). Hmm, perhaps you don’t get the wine if you are stuck in the office, but in the fields be sure to be served a little glass of one of these…  






 Romantic names, aren’t they? You can buy these wines from Brigitte und Stefan Käser-Härdi at Bächlihof, Oberflachs: http://www.baechlihof.ch/. And as for me, I cant wait till the next harvesting season.


Have a pleasant weekend, everyone!

Santé!

AB

Monday 25 October 2010

Small country, Great art

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein


God works in mysterious ways, they say. Must be true, because I am still wondering what I am doing in Vaduz every Saturday evening lately... “What is Vaduz?”, might come a legitimate question from some of you. A tiny capital of a tiny principality squeezed between Austria and Switzerland.  Liechtenstein is known to many as the tax oasis, the financial paradise, or the country with the highest gross domestic product per person in the world according to the CIA World Factbook (you might want to double check that :-).

Anyways, I am here not to hide my fortunes (it would be lovely, mind you!). I am here to marvel at modern art. The concentration of art pieces per square meter is staggering. It is literally an open air museum. The contrast between smooth lines of contemporary art and ragged background of million-year-old mountains  is magic. Let's have a walk down the main street...
Tre Cavalli by Nag Arnoldi
Tre Cavalli by Nag Arnoldi
2002, Bronze

"Hochsitz" by Robert Indermaur
2000, Iron/Bronze 2/2, 365 x 60 x 60 cm

Phoenix by Doris Bühler
Phoenix by Doris Bühler
2003, Bronze

File:Vaduz Botero-165.jpg
Reclining Woman by Fernando Botero
1993, Bronze, Ex. 1/3, 134.6 x 349.3 x 167.6 cm (incl. plinth)
 
Botero, when asked about the elaborate forms of his figures, said: "Art ist always an exaggeration of reality, ist color, ist form, its spiritual significanca".


La Puerta de la Liberdad by Eduardo Chillida
1983, Corten steel, 247 x 242 x 125 x 16 cm



African King by Gunther Stilling
2002, Bronze, Ex 1/6

Figure in a Shelter by Henry Moore
1983, Bronze, 183 x 213.5 x 244 cm

And that is just a fraction of sculptures in Vaduz; those that touched me most. An old Russian actor said once: "Art is given to people so they do not die of reality". There is no danger of dying in Liechtenstein in that case. Refreshing thought, I am looking forward to next Saturday. 
 
Where do you go to escape reality?..
   
Love,
 
AB 

Monday 18 October 2010

Hello, Angel

I have been playing with the idea of limited edition art prints for quite a while now, but somehow I never found the right moment or piece to actually test out the technique. Now I’ve got a good reason: I miss my Guardian Angel Number Three, the one from “The other side”… I do visit it once in a while (it may be found in Teatro Palino in Baden (1 floor), but apparently monthly visits are simply not enough.   

Zanj Gadyen Mwen (Creole for "My guardian Angel"). The other side.  Art print with hand-applied leaf gold detail. Edition of 20.

Limited edition art prints of this work are available now. Art print measures  70 cm X 50 cm, and is enhanced with a hand-applied leaf gold (23.75 k) detail. The Angel is printed on linen and has a lovely texture of the original.  Each print is hand-signed and numbered (edition of 20). 

 "Sonntags Brunch und Bild" at Teatro Palino.
Marc "Palino" Brunner and The Angels :-). May 2010, Baden

Tuesday 12 October 2010

ErreichPaar

Last week the little stage of Teatro Palino in Baden welcomed an interesting couple: Laura Ender and A Cello… A woman and her Passion, her longing for love.

Thirty minutes. Dark empty stage. Not one word. Naked heroine Olga. A Cello. Olga is in love. With her instrument. Or is it her memories?.. Nudity is shocking, not because of nakedness of the body, but because of exposure of the soul. Tension is so thick, one can almost cut it with a knife.

After a string of disturbing wonderings such as “I hope they disinfected the floor”, I start to submerge after the heroine into her dream world. But suddenly it is not Olga, it is Laura speaking, presenting herself and the sound technician, and making a dialog with the public. It is like being pulled up from a bottom of an ocean in three seconds. I want to scream: “No, no. Please bring back Olga…”

Olga is back. And so are her memories. We are in Buenos Aires now. I am sitting just two meters away from Olga, I can see tiny drops of sweat on her skin, and luster in her eyes as she dreams of melongas… Beautiful plastique, a perfect balance between wilderness and surrender. Laura manages to sketch the essence of a female soul with an astonishing precision. I am glad to be hidden by darkness as at some moments I feel like she is telling my story and I am almost certain that I am blushing…

“ErreichPaar” is a piece about longing, love and loneliness. Do go and see it if you have a chance. If you want to understand a woman. If you want to feel alive. And maybe a little lonely.

Have a wonderful week and a few lonely moments, it will do you good.

Love,

AB

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Looking for Answers

Many people look for the answers in books. Bible for ones, “A guide to psychotherapy” for the others, “The Little Prince” for me. Amazing how this little story is able to accord with one's mood and perspectives, how it chimes in unison with one's thoughts, offering a consolation or a smile. Today it’s the Chapter 21 that makes a perfect sense…  
Chapter 21
It was then that the fox appeared.

"Good morning," said the fox.

"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."

"I am a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."

"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

"What does that mean--'tame'?"
...
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."
...
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

"Please--tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."
...
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
...
"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
...
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."
...
"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"The Little Prince"
written and illustrated by
Antoine de Saint Exupéry



Sunday 3 October 2010

Sleeping Woman and a Cat

A couple of weeks ago I wrote „If I could paint events and impressions of the last week, the image would be a bright, surrealistic mosaic…“. Minutes after the posting I thought:  why shouldn’t I actually do it? Et voila, here are some first impressions of my new (still unfinished) painting “Une femme et un Chat endormi”. It measures 100 cm x 50 cm, acryllic paint and leaf gold (23.75 k) on canvas.  


It’s funny how emotions fade, even after a few days… It’s so much easier with events, even the most unremarkable ones, they leave a print in the memory, they have structures, something to grab on. Emotions are so ephemeral and volatile… Is that why we take pictures of happy moments, to have the “evidence” of our happiness? Anyway, I tried my best to reconstruct the events of the week, mostly in the form of color and movement; this painting is like a song without a text, one can write his own words to it.




Have a brilliant Sunday, everyone, and only upbeat melodies.

Love,

AB