Yet Another Museum . . . (6/3)

I’ve found that if I establish a routine in the place I’m staying, it feels more familiar – and I feel more at home.  So . . . I’ve been having my coffee and (chocolate) croissant in the same café across the street in the morning. Fortunately for my routing (and my taste buds), it was open on Sunday. Afterwards, I headed to the Kunsthaus, Zurich’s “high art” museum. It’s a pretty amazing collection! But their special exhibition was on Fashion – lucky me – and it was a different “take” than any of the other fashion exhibits I’ve seen. The majority of the exhibit was a collection of drawings and paintings from the museum’s own collection that illustrated various eras of fashion.  I listened to the audio guide, which provided commentary as we sent along – on hoop skirts, and “dandies” a la Oscar Wilde, and a queen who had herself painted in commoners’ clothing – muslin!  How shocking! Occasionally, there would be an actual dress on a model, or piece of clothing.  At the beginning of an exhibit was a fascinating “slide show” of people pictured on the left in casual clothing and on the right in the “uniform” of their profession. The creators of this exhibit had selected somewhat extreme examples, but there was a female pilot, a female judge, an attorney, a butcher, a policeman, a soldier, and on and on – both a male and female doctor – etc.. The slides were quite striking in the message I took from them that the clothing defines the person as a “professional” in his or her work.

Back to the rest of the exhibit: there were a couple of videos – one of a man who, without any sewing instruction, took apart his clothes, made patterns from them, and then made his own clothes.  He had to be told to iron the seams, and he didn’t know how to cut the denim for his jeans so the pants didn’t hang right when they were first made.  It was interesting – and funny – to listen to. (Why didn’t you take some lessons, dummy?) There was another video on fashion models and some other things.  At the end of the exhibit, there was a huge pile of used clothing. On one side, the garments were all white; on the other side, the garments had color. The pile was about 8 feet high, and the point was how much clothing we throw away.  I appreciate that – and it made quite a statement.

After a short lunch break, I continued on to the permanent exhibit, and I decided to go to the more recent work first. (I learned last year in Basel, when I started with the old works and didn’t have time to see the Picasso and other more recent stuff because we were on a tight schedule.) The collection is really amazing – a LOT of Giacometti, several Picassos, Klee, one Calder, George Segal (whom I love), several Rodins and I’m not doing justice to this. Van Gogh – including the one of him with the bandaged ear. Gaugain. The collection of late 19^th/early 20^th century work is really impressive. I really enjoyed focusing on this work.  Once I was done with all of this, I went back in time.  There is some good Swiss painting of the 19^th century, and I’ve become familiar with, and fond of, a couple of artists of that period. There was one El Greco, one Rembrandt, and a couple of other good pieces, but the strength of the collection is really in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  It sounds as if this museum is determined to pick up current art as it becomes available, rather than to collect more older work. Oh, by the way, this museum also calls still live, “nature mort,” as did the museum in Basel, and I still can’t think of a better description than “dead nature” – and I still dislike it. But at least I can’t giggle when I see it. One of the commentaries today talked about how artists, toward the end of the 19^th century, began to be interested in painting outside and thinking about differences in light on a subject (witness the haystacks of Monet), which became possible because now paint was available in a tube and could be carried outside.

There was a second special exhibit – I’m not clear on the theme - with a lot of 19^th and 20^th century work.  In that exhibit was a painting by Grandma Moses! I have NEVER seen any of her paintings in a museum before.  Good for her!!!

Finally, I left the museum about 5:15 PM, and hustled to two churches before they closed at 6:00 PM. The first was the twin-towered Grossmünster, which was important in the Reformation because the preacher, Zwingli, spoke out against the Catholic Church from this cathedral. Then, across the river, I went to the Fraümunster, a 13^th century cathedral with windows designed by Marc Chagall and others by Augusto Giacometti.  The Chagall windows, in particular, are spectacular.

From there, I walked along the river to the lake bank.  I had been told there was a particular dock from which I could take a boat ride on my Zurich card. In fact, one showed up about ten minutes after I got there. I rode up the river all the way to the Landesmuseum and the Bahnhof, at the intersection of the two rivers, back down the river, and out into Lake Zurich.  There were a lot of people out on the lake in boats.  I also saw two people standing on what looked like surfboards, only they were thicker. They each had a pole or paddle, and they were making their way across the lake. It was hard to believe they could stand up on the water.  The whole ride – the river and the lake – was really beautiful.

By this time, I was hungry, and my travel book had recommended a vegetarian restaurant – Guinness certified as the world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant, established in 1898. It’s set up like a buffet; you can take what you want; and your plate is weighed to determine what you owe.  I had wonderful food – lots of great salads and other combinations. YUM!  The desserts were also good. I tried to be conservative on what I took; it would be easy to get carried away, as the food is presented so beautifully, as well as being tasty. Most of the people eating there were in their 20s, but there were a few folks like me showing some gray in their hair. From there, it was an easy tram ride back to where I’m staying.  I’ve requested staying here an extra night – my original plans were to leave tomorrow – but I haven’t heard back yet on whether that is possible, so right now, I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. We’ll see . . .