A bit about art and me
Art is important in my life, because...Great or beautiful art can connect you to your humanity. It can take you on a journey to explore the darkest depths or to soar the greatest heights of human experience and emotion.
Art goes best with... passion and curiosity
Three words that best describe art according to you... expression, inspiration, history
An art exhibition you have enjoyed recently... James Turrell retrospective at LACMA. I also saw a retrospective of Meret Oppenheim's work last year at Berlin's Martin Gropius Bau, which is worth mentioning because it was so fantastic!
Best city to go to for art... Berlin and Los Angeles
Your favorite museum in the world... Can't narrow it down to one. I love different museums for different reasons. Uffizi Gallery in Florence for Renaissance art; the Met in NY and Tate Modern in London for their stellar changing exhibitions; the Hermitage in St Petersburg for its beauty and vast collection of masterpieces; Hamburger Banhof, Berlin in a former train station, for its collections of contemporary art, including German contemporary art; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, for its beautiful location on the coast. Sublime!
The artist you would like to have lunch with? Meret Oppenheim and Marcel Duchamp. That would be a fun lunch. And I could do with some chess tips.
If you were an artist, who would you like to be? Da Vinci. Polymath. Innovator. Genius. Liberator of caged animals. A great artist and a great man, ahead of his time.
The artwork you’d like to have hanging in your living room? Goya’s ‘The Third of May, 1808’ and Francis Bacon's 'Study After Velasquez' Portrait of Pope Innocent X'
Chinese contemporary art for you is... at an interesting and exciting place creatively
Something I would like to share
I went to Moscow last September to check out the Moscow Biennale and the local art scene and was really blown away by some of the artists I met. In particular a performance artist, German Vinogradov, who invited us to his tiny studio on the last night of our stay. Stepping into the cluttered, dark, sage smoke filled room where he lived, slept and worked, with nothing but a few candles illuminating it, we were met with a scene that resembled a shaman's temple. Found objects, like bits of bone, feathers, figurines of Ded Moroz (Russia's Father Frost), and car parts, hung from the ceiling, were clustered on altars, or were incorporated into his haunting, ritualistic, hypnotic music and sound performance. The few of us gathered there listened in captivated silence in the darkness. It was an unusual and magical experience.
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