I worked for 15 hours on Saturday and on Sunday I decided I would do a lot of walking to make up for sitting at a desk for such long hours.
So I made one of my regular visits to Kunsthaus Zürich. Today many sections were closed and there was just me and a man in a blue anorak looking like a homeless person who had cleaned up. We were looking at one of Bacon’s triptychs. The man unexpectedly engaged me in a conversation.
First he started speaking Italian thinking that I must be Italian, and very quickly he switched to Swiss German but after a few responses he switched to English. “Don’t you hate it?” he said. Modern Art is the biggest swindle of our Modern times. Look at this and compare it to an Italian classic. He turned out to be rather eccentric but certainly new his stuff. He mentioned so many modern Artists and their history and sometimes he would switch to French when he started talking about French Artists. He wasn’t an academic and didn’t strike me as an Artist and I could smell alcohol on his breath but I was lost at dealing with such an adversary even though I pride myself on my knowledge of Art.
It was like arguing with a homeless version of Brian Sewell!
He went on about Dadaists, a few mediocre painters who had switched to photography because they couldn’t draw etc. I was trapped, I left, I wasn’t planning to stay too long as I had seen the permanent gallery so many times so I left the old town heading for Zürich lake.
Passing by an Italian restaurant the man was engaged in a conversation with waiters who appeared to know him.
He turned to me poked me and said hello again!
Actually it wasn’t like a horror movie I like eccentrics like this man, in fact the world is a better place for it, and if he has a board where he ticks off modern-art-lover victims he now has a tick for me!
eventually when I reached the lake I sat on a bench and watched a toddler with his young father.
The kid first pointed at a little bird, then reached the sculpture of the woman (pictured here).
He kept pointing at the breasts of the female figure. He must have been hungry.
Here I thought there are so many ways of looking at Art. Art as booby-trap for knowledgeable eccentrics who make us face or question what we seek in modern Art, then a little kid who looks at bronze breasts and wants to be fed.
