At the Guggenheim Architecture and Collection exhibition

This weekend, we made a trip to Bonn, Germany, for visiting the exhibitions The Guggenheim Architecture and The Guggenheim Collection. Unfortunately, it was not allowed to take any pictures and I had to leave my camera behind.

The Architecture exhibition was the better part, showing works of Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and others. I was surprised to see that my personal favorite was the latest draft of a new Guggenheim museum by Hadid (I perceive her as the architect who wins lots of competitions but whose drafts are rarely put into reality).

Entering the Guggenheim Collection, I soon found out that sometimes the container of art (= the museum building) is more interesting than the art itself. While there were a couple of noteworthy pieces from Picasso, Gogh & Co., most of the exhibited artwork did not match my subjective taste. I was heavily reminded of An Oak Tree in London’s Tate Gallery, one of the most funniest artwork I have seen so far.

[The visitor sees a shelf with a glass of water on it]
While this appears to be a glass of water on a shelf, the artist states that it is in fact an oak tree. Craig-Martin’s assertion addresses fundamental questions about what we understand to be art and our faith in the power of the artist.

Maybe it’s just me and my lack of sophisticated knowledge about art, but painting a dozen of monochrome canvases and selling each of them as significant contribution to “art” is simply a joke. And no, switching the color from painting to painting does not help. The only thing I could imagine is that the artist wanted to express “See what nonsense I can come up with and still earn my living!”.

Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun making our way through the exhibition. It’s quite fascinating which kind of associations you can come up with when you see paintings while being hungry and exhausted.