Best movie this year?

"Io sono l'amore", "I am love": This evening, I saw the movie, with Tilda Swinton among others, for the 2nd time. A breakthrough, I find. A very grand household in Milano is run, pristinely. Wealth written all over it. A grandfather announces who shall succeed him in running the company. Almost aristocratic, the atmosphere, but the firm only exists since the last World War (II) and is not a 'grand' as that, nor, by extension, the family that runs it - the Recchi. That's just by-the-by, because with all the servants serving excellent food and wine and preparing and cleaning up and ironing and compensating for the affection, which any family should exchange among itself, at a minimum - there's Emma, once Kitiya, who had been picked up by the grandfather's son in Russia, like a prized Morandi painting, of which several are on view in this movie.

Emma and her three children: A schemer, a romantic and a semi-rebellious lesbian. One wins, in his view of things, the other will be disappointed and dies; the daughter finds her way, it seems, but does not leave behind her what she 'should', or might. Instead, their mother does, for love - of a cook. Leaving Tancredi (the husband) behind, to find her freedom. Which, most visually, she certainly did not have before - nor knew to crave?

The stylishness works - because it does not dominate. The soundtrack works for me too, brilliantly, but for a few exceptions: John Adams, the composer, did not know what hit him (he wrote the music before the movie was made). There's an exquisite love-making scene. And there's the three-women-in-the-restaurant scene - at the core of the story, which places mothers, grandmothers and wives "where they belong" - but for Emma, in the end. In the restaurant, it is the grandfather's wife, who signifies: 'Were are the women, who have married into the Recchi. Let's keep this ship afloat.' But Emma eats, with the most ravishing of pleasures, the meal served by the cook - tasting freedom. The third (young) woman, destined to marry one of the Recchi sons, plays by the book. She understands the role she is supposed to assume, once married - but that won't happen, for other reasons.

A suberb movie! Go see it!

Monet in Paris

A half-empty Lufthansa plane took me to Paris mid-October. Anti-pension-at-62-legislation protests were affecting French public life. Public transport was severely slowed down. But the new driverless shuttle from Terminal 1 to the train station ran swiftly. And an RER rolled into the station about 10 minutes after I arrived. Lucky devil! It was crowded already, full of people who work at the humungous airport and travellers. A woman sitting next to me was mobilephoning to her hearts' content. She must be working for customs, because she mentioned how many Chinese had been apprehended that day for carrying more than $10.000 in cash. They like to shop, don't they! Indeed, affluent Chinese and Russian tourists keep the French luxury industry alive and kicking. Michel Houellebecq's most recent novel "La carte et le territoire" picks up on this phenomenon. Just imagine: You go to your bank and take out $10.000 to go shopping. Amazing!

An African gentleman in front me was using two mobile phones to keep in touch.  Indeed, lots of people were phoning and messaging. In our society, everybody is somewhere else. The RER stopped at Gare du Nord; no connection to Chatelet because of the strike. So I hopped onto Metro No 4, then 7 and finally 9, to get to Franklin Roosevelt. A few steps later I stood in front of the Grand Palais with my online-reservation-prepaid-ticket, to see the grand Monet exhibition. The prepaid people generated a queue, too, though a shorter one than the on-the-spot ticket buyers. It was a breezy courtyard, so I was glad it didn't take too long to get in. Also, a short, extremely picky and bossy lady, who wore shoes that were supposed to look expensive, began to bother me. She was pushing around her husband. Their daughter intervened in typically French incomprehensible spurts; an awkward family. Of course, the bossy lady had accosted one of the guards, complaining that they had reserved tickets for 17:00 and weren't being let in. When we filed up the stairs, the guard made fun of her. 'She can't come in, she complained'. I was amused!

The exhibition organisers had vacuumed up the Monets from museums across the globe. That in itself was impressive. I particularly appreciated several paintings hanging in small museums: A Seine sunset from the Smith College collection (Massachusetts), a very impressionistic and atmospheric Gare St. Lazare from the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum and a similarly atmospheric scene of the Gare d'Auteuil, which belongs to the Conseil General of Cergy Pontoise. There was much to compare: The Cote d'Azur panoramas, the Normandie coastline perspectives, the poplar tree views and the haystack landscapes. Monet had painted fifteen of them for the original exhibition. We were allowed to see six next to one another.

The exhibition was so expansive, it was hard to take it all in; impossible, in fact. It made more sense to take your pick. I did note that Monet had painted in at least three optically distinguishable styles: Flattish-simplifying, dotty-spotty (a bit like Seurat) and contrasting-turbulent (e.g. lots of movement implied by the colours and strokes).  Monet has created some breathtaking depictions of cloudy skies and rendered a practically abstract sleepy willow in 1920-22, though painting human bodies wasn't his forte, in my view. A whole room was devoted to impressions of Venice, where two of the most beautifully framed pictures could be found (Le Palais Contarini & The Doge Palace).

Slightly overwhelmed I walked down to the very busy Metro No. 1, got off at St. Paul and rang the bell of my friends' apartment in the part of the Marais, which leans towards the river. I was expecting to take them out for dinner, but instead about a dozen people, most of whom I knew, gathered for a lively dinner at their place.

One couple was considering investing in a property on the Ile St. Louis, to turn it into several corporate rental apartments. I pointed out to them that in doing so, they would be part of a trend, which makes it less and less feasible for regular, middle or working class people to live in town. Lots of wealthy investors have taken their funds out of the stockmarket and channelled it into real estate in London or Paris. Le Monde quoted a French investor, who lives in London, and put €15M into Paris real estate. Such people want to rent their newly acquired property to people like them; global urban hoppers, with adequate cash in their pockets. Add to that the very wealthy people, who keep a third or fourth home in Paris, which they use a few times a year perhaps - and you're crowding out 'regular' people, who can't afford the rent, or purchase, of a pad in one of the 20 arrondissements. The City of Paris has been using its stock of social housing to assure that nurses, metro drivers and rubbish collectors can continue to live in town. This in turn crowds out those people, for whom social housing was originally intended.

In my days (1984-5), there was Fauchon and a brand new traiteur near the Rue de Seine market. Now I note the results of a traiteur explosion. Fancy foods, well-packaged olive oils and chocolats in all shapes can be purchased in elegantly designed storelettes at every corner. Thankfully, you still have down-to-earth market streets like the Rue des Martyres in the 9ieme, offering local butcher ware, traditional patisserie and fruits 'n veggies. Round the corner is the Musee de la Vie Romantique, an oasis hidden in a courtyard next to a primary school. There I saw the most impressive painting of a lightening strike (by a Maksim Vorobiev) I ever seen! By the way, the art deco gallery, named the Galleries de Prado, pictured above, I stumble upon by chance, on my way up to the 9th arrondissement. An ungentrified treasure!

My First Vernissage

Around August Vivian and I developed an idea. Why not exhibit our amateur works of art in supertrendyarty Berlin, invite all our friends and their friends and see what happens? ViVi! Get known, get some art appreciation and have fun all the while. ViVi! Because our Berlin connections weren't that good, we ended up doing the one-evening-vernissage-exhibition-finissage in Hamburg; simply because I was getting my hair cut! My hairdresser Folker h. mentioned he had a good friend in Berlin, with arty and location connections ... and I swirled around in my chair and asked him: "Why don't we do it here, at your place?" He spontaneously agreed. The date was swiftly set: 30th October, one day after World Saving(s) Day - there is a difference between saving and having savings, I suppose. Invitations were sent, catering organised etc. It turned out to be a lovely party with friends, nothing sold, but all Flammkuchen (Alsacian pizza) munched and most of the white wine gone.

Vivian and I went to grade school together, as well as painting classes in the street we both lived in, many years ago (1970-74). We ran into one another on the balcony of the apartment I'd just rented in September 2007. She lived next door on the 'penthouse floor' of our respectfully ugly 70's building. First she recognised my sister's dog (having seen him in the neighbourhood; he hasn't been around since 1970 ...), then my sister and finally myself. We've been good friends ever since,  though she's meanwhile moved to Berlin. She paints, as does her partner Christoph (his two paintings are on the back wall; see picture gallery, link 'Fotos'), I collage. That's how we came to place our works all over the hairdresser's saloon on 30th October. View the vid.

Makes you think (again)

Do please !!! have a look at this website: Storyofstuff.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been said before, written about before, filmed before (remember the movie Koyaanisqatsi?). We in the 'West' remain, majority-wise, a comfy crowd, not wanting to deal, one a regular basis, with where "the stuff" comes from that we buy and use. Still, many of us have a lingering sense of the absurd, the insane, the 'it can't go on this way'.

If you need a little push to act - to figure out what you and I can do to stop over-wanting, -consuming, and -wasting, the people behind this website might give you the push you need, not least because of the quirky graphics and to-the-point messages and info-bytes; some of which sound so preposterous, one feels like saying: "Give me the source!" or "Give me a break!". I came across it by accident, having checked out the website of a singer I like very much, Nikka Costa, who seemed to have disappeared from public view.

Lemme' tell ya. I try! (I could try harder...). To buy local, organic. To buy organic cosmetics. Haven't gone as far as only buying organic clothing yet. Don't even want to think about the dyes, how the cotton or the wool was produced ... . But then the dental hygenist says I should buy an ultrasound toothbrush. Do I want to find out where all the parts come from? My mobile phone has probably got coltrane in it, from Congo. I should chuck it.

Aleppo - Italian-sounding Syria

There's so much I'd like to tell you about Aleppo in August; though I hardly saw anything of this Syrian city, one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban settlements on our planet (e.g unlike struck-down-by-the-Lord-Babylon or Mesopotamian Ur). The backache did not help (disk problem) and my focus was on facilitating the multi-issues, multi-stakeholder and multi-participant workshop, which took place 30 minutes outside Aleppo, at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas ICARDA.

Just imagine though: The old Peugeots in town (ex-French colony), which integrate into a constant-juggling-for-position-but-fluid-nonaggressive traffic; the Mediterranean meza tapas food, the tractors and amazingly decorated trucks (like in India?) driving on the motorway, the motorcyclists driving in the opposite direction on the (so very close) highway's curb, the hot but dry climate, the sprawling built-upness of the city, the surprise of seeing trees lining streets, the bazaary inner-city shopping streets sub-divided into the 'diesel motor' or 'tyres alley' (I never even made it to the Souk), the Lebanese white wine I sipped whilst listening to the cacophony of muezzin callings on a hotel terrace in the Christian part of town; not to forget the general friendliness and the good-looking males; nor the shopkeeper laying out his praying carpet towards Mecca at five o'clock in the morning (backaches make you look out the window at that time of day). I hope to be back; maybe you, too?

How to become an expert

... on a curious and rather particular subject - Some of you will remember how I came to transform my personal interest in the grotesques (grottesche, Grottesken), that weird form of Renaissance ornament, into a somewhat scholarly book. Thanks to an open-minded publisher (and an investment on my part, called "print subsidy"), Metamorphosed Margins was published in 2008 and has since entered many more a library (art history section) than expected, including, to my delight, the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Hertziana in Rome.

Who might have taken it out to read is quite another matter, of course - but why be pedantic (or impatient)? Nonetheless, coming across the book being cited in the appropriate wikipedia entry gave me a pleasurable kick.

From Sabbath year to Sabbatical

Number Two. Another non-fiction book. In German. I have published. 'Twas to be a project with a Berlin-based art historic publisher that came to naught. No other publisher I contacted was interested, nor the literary agent I work with. So there it lay in a cupboard (digital, computer, these days).

When a friend of mine recently published a thriller, partly set in China, via books-on-demand, I figured: "Me too". Die Wandlungsreise (transforming travel, the metamorphosing trip, the voyage of change ....) is a brief cultural history of the sabbatical - investigating the links between the ancient sabbath year and the 'sabbatical' of our days (nobody has written about this so far, it seems) - enveloped in episodes of my sabbatical travels in Italy (2005) and reflections upon them (later). Some photos are mingled in and there's an index, with travel tipps and brief descriptions of artists mentioned - who created works with grotesques, during the Renaissance (the topic, which fuelled my sabbatical travels). Naturally, I very much hope that some of you shall want to read it!

Eating out (in Brussels)

A few days ago I went for lunch at Kwint, a newish fashionable restaurant in Brussels, opened in October 2009 by Caviar Kaspia and Maison de la Truffe, two French companies situated on Place de la Madeleine, in Paris, whom I have never head of before (all I know is Fauchon; must take a luxury label 101 course soon). I was struck by the lunchtime busy-ness and the tres 'artiste contemporain' design of the place, easily viewable through the huge glass windows. The photo has nothing to do with this, by the way. It's the only foodie image I could find among my photos (a traditional dish at Da Bolognesi in Rome).

After visiting an engaging exhibition about the history of Belgium (1815 onwards) in the Musee Belvue and with some time to kill before boarding a plane back to Hamburg, I was hungry. So why not spend a good €20-30 on a main dish for lunch? - not at all unusual for Brussels. It was easy enough to get a table. The maitre d' simply pointed towards two free tables for two in front of his nose. Ordering was easy too, because I had made up my mind after screening the menu by the entrance that I should satisfy my craving for a lovely plate of pasta; in this instance, home-made (of course ..., only, by whom?) tagliatelle in a creamy sauce covered by a slice of braised foi gras and black truffle shavings. Just a light lunch, you know, en passant.

The friendly enough waitress took two or three turns to remember my desire to drink a Chardonnay with my meal, one of only two wines available by the glass. Oh well. Darkish bread and a fancily presented breadstick (you know, the italianate grissini ones) hit the table first. How nice. The waitress did not bother to show me the bottle before pouring the wine into the glass - indeed, as there are only two white wines offered and it's written in the menu. The tagliatelle followed suit rather quickly. Though they did taste 'freshly made' and were hot and al dente, I cursed myself for ordering such a flashy dish. Foi gros is a pleasure to eat and so are tagliatelle. But they don't go together too well, especially if only accompanied by an admittedly well seasoned and not too heavy creamy sauce and truffle shavings. The lack of vegetable fresh- and crunchyness - asparagus slices, or to stay in season, some chicoree - was all too apparent. Even sun-dried tomatoes might have done the trick. And the creaminess of a pate de foi gras sauce - similar to spaghetti wallowed in cream cheese (Rabbiola for example; yummy) - would have fused much better with the pasta than the well prepared slice of foi gras. My own fault for ordering it, of course, though paying for my meal should not have been such a lengthy affair - a matter of service, if I may say so.

You may wonder why I decided to share such luxurious problems with you. For one, I used to enjoy eating in Brussels and was seldom disappointed (2002-2004); fond memories 'usurped'. Second, high priced lunch should come with comprehensively good service. In fact, good service makes mediocre food taste good and should in any case not be contingent on price. Third - paralleling in metaphors - I'd rather that croissants become a rare delicacy if they are always well made. Instead, what we get today is croissants at every corner - often very nicely packaged or presented - and hardly any are taste good.