Hombroich.
Nov. 1st, 2015 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sister_luckI took yesterday off - I've only got one more straggler to mark and I'm more or less on top of my planning - because the weather was gorgeous and my back and shoulders definitely couldn't take another day at my desk.
We spent the afternoon at Insel Hombroich, a museum, an island, a park, a place to experience the seasons, modern art and ancient artefacts in parallel to nature. It is not an island in the geographical sense, it is not in actual fact surrounded by water, but situated close to a river and its flood meadows.
I did not take my big camera, which was far too much weight for my neck, so all pictures were taken with my crappy little mobile phone camera.
The landscape is very typical of the area - Kopfweiden, willows that are cut every year so that their twigs can be harvested for basketry and other uses.
The last time I was at Hombroich was more than twenty years, but not that much had changed. I was a little sad that we couldn't see the Rembrandt etchings - one building was closed. As a whole, the art that is on display is not the main point of attraction for me, but the interaction of architecture and nature. There are no signs anywhere explaining the works of art and the collections of archaeological findings from several parts of Asia. On the one hand, I like that because the pieces stand for themselves (and interact in unexpected ways - colourful glass vases thousands of years old and a room full of blue Yves Klein objects), on the other hand that in itself is a problem, because the context is lost, their provenance obscured.
You get a pavilion with three or four heads from Angkor Wat and you do wonder how they got there. Their beauty is stunning and if you look out the window the old park resembles a jungle but they still don't belong here.
Insel Hombroich is also the workplace of Anatol, a German artist I first became aware of when I was my kid's age. He was a policeman, but also one of the students of Josef Beuys. He did the puppet theatre show that told pupils about the dangers of traffic and he was a local celebrity.
His sculptures were a great hit with the kid.
He and his wife were sitting in lawn chairs on the meadow surrounded by several of his works - he was reading a travel guide, his wife, with her chair at a respectful distance to him, was knitting. There was a short interaction between the kid and Erdmute, Anatol's wife, when he wondered aloud about the large spinning top made of rusting metal, but apart from that we left them alone. I'm still cringing when I think about being sent to ask Anatol for his autograph when I was six or that one time at Hombroich when my father struck up a conversation with him about his art. I know that this is part of Anatol's work, but I just can't.
Anatol's openness is one that people tend to exploit, literally overstepping the lines that he has put up surrounding some of his art:
One couple climbed over these, standing in the middle of various pieces in front of Anatol's workshop, taking pictures of each other.
I had only ever been to Hombroich in the summer or in late spring, so autum was a special experience:
There were still flowers around, among them these very spectacular blue ones - Yves Klein would have been very jealous. Aconitum, I believe, Chinese wolfsbane, to be more precise. Extremely poisonous!
The cafeteria offers traditional fare: Rosinenstuten, Schmalzbrote, Pellkartoffeln, very good coffee. At the beginning the buffet - included in the price of admission - used to be huge, but people overdid it, spending the whole day at Hombroich, eating a full three meals there, so today there is a donation box for the service and the selection of foods has been pared down.
When we left, the sun was about to set, the shadows elongated, the light golden on the rosehips:
We spent the afternoon at Insel Hombroich, a museum, an island, a park, a place to experience the seasons, modern art and ancient artefacts in parallel to nature. It is not an island in the geographical sense, it is not in actual fact surrounded by water, but situated close to a river and its flood meadows.
I did not take my big camera, which was far too much weight for my neck, so all pictures were taken with my crappy little mobile phone camera.
The landscape is very typical of the area - Kopfweiden, willows that are cut every year so that their twigs can be harvested for basketry and other uses.
The last time I was at Hombroich was more than twenty years, but not that much had changed. I was a little sad that we couldn't see the Rembrandt etchings - one building was closed. As a whole, the art that is on display is not the main point of attraction for me, but the interaction of architecture and nature. There are no signs anywhere explaining the works of art and the collections of archaeological findings from several parts of Asia. On the one hand, I like that because the pieces stand for themselves (and interact in unexpected ways - colourful glass vases thousands of years old and a room full of blue Yves Klein objects), on the other hand that in itself is a problem, because the context is lost, their provenance obscured.
You get a pavilion with three or four heads from Angkor Wat and you do wonder how they got there. Their beauty is stunning and if you look out the window the old park resembles a jungle but they still don't belong here.
Insel Hombroich is also the workplace of Anatol, a German artist I first became aware of when I was my kid's age. He was a policeman, but also one of the students of Josef Beuys. He did the puppet theatre show that told pupils about the dangers of traffic and he was a local celebrity.
His sculptures were a great hit with the kid.
He and his wife were sitting in lawn chairs on the meadow surrounded by several of his works - he was reading a travel guide, his wife, with her chair at a respectful distance to him, was knitting. There was a short interaction between the kid and Erdmute, Anatol's wife, when he wondered aloud about the large spinning top made of rusting metal, but apart from that we left them alone. I'm still cringing when I think about being sent to ask Anatol for his autograph when I was six or that one time at Hombroich when my father struck up a conversation with him about his art. I know that this is part of Anatol's work, but I just can't.
Anatol's openness is one that people tend to exploit, literally overstepping the lines that he has put up surrounding some of his art:
One couple climbed over these, standing in the middle of various pieces in front of Anatol's workshop, taking pictures of each other.
I had only ever been to Hombroich in the summer or in late spring, so autum was a special experience:
There were still flowers around, among them these very spectacular blue ones - Yves Klein would have been very jealous. Aconitum, I believe, Chinese wolfsbane, to be more precise. Extremely poisonous!
The cafeteria offers traditional fare: Rosinenstuten, Schmalzbrote, Pellkartoffeln, very good coffee. At the beginning the buffet - included in the price of admission - used to be huge, but people overdid it, spending the whole day at Hombroich, eating a full three meals there, so today there is a donation box for the service and the selection of foods has been pared down.
When we left, the sun was about to set, the shadows elongated, the light golden on the rosehips:
