Freeform Sign Painting

There are store fronts all over town with the phrase Glaedelig Jul (Merry Christmas) painted on the windows. I stopped to chat with the man most likely responsible for many of the Glaedelig Jul hand-lettered signs in the Norrebro neighborhood. What an amazing hand--no guidelines or anything--he just painted letter by letter with complete precision. Beautiful.

Louisiana Museum in Snow

In the city on Friday night it snowed quite beautifully. I knew it would be a good weekend to take a last trip to the Louisiana Musuem, so I spent Sunday wandering around the sculptures in the snow photographing the building and then went through several of the new exhibitions. I hadn't been to the museum since September and the gallery with a view to the pond was considerably different--from green leaves and greenish colored water to yellow leaves and a layer of ice on the water. The museum was packed with people and the restaurant seemed busy all day long. They had a nice wood fire going and the nearby tables were hot real estate. After wandering for a few hours I took a break and watched a 1980's Japanese animated feature film called AKIRA which was on view as part of an exhibit called Manga (Japanese comics). Pretty cool... I hadn't seen that one in a long long time--surrealist sci-fi biker-gang apocalypse.

Klas Anshelm x 2 in Sweden = ♥

This weekend I took the train across the new Denmark-Sweden bridge and visited museums in Malmö and Lund. Both buildings are by Swedish architect Klas Anshelm. I really love these two museums--modest and quiet on the outside with incredible day-lit galleries on the inside. Simple materials, a variety of spaces and not too many fussy details make them an art-first, architecture-second situation... as it should be.




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The Malmö Konsthall, 1975 ⤴
There are two main types of rooms: One with a repetitive grid of light wells that can also be blacked out for video etc. The second is a large hall with a glass ceiling plane facing north. Beautiful and different qualities of light in both situations. The tryptych contains photos of the same space shot at day / dusk / night - make sure to click and enlarge that one. A raw, worn and beautiful wood floor made of wood planks is simply nailed-in from the top.



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The Lund Konsthall, 1956 ⤴
With a similar cross-section as the main hall in the Malmö building, the Lund Konsthall sports translucent glass instead of clear. Materials are dark stone and black linoleum floors, concrete structure with a brick facing and painted steel railings. The building is more or less square, with open air courtyard in the middle. Very very nice nice!


P.S.
House Double
In the plaza fronting the Lund Konsthall stands a 15th century brick farmhouse that used to be surrounded only by crops. Now it's surrounded by cobblestone and is used as a small art gallery for a cooperative of local artists. Displayed on a window sill were a group of tiny cast metal copies of the building...brilliant!

Diagnosis

Well, I was strolling around the Statens Museum last week when a voice in my head that sounded like a doctor breaking the news of a rough diagnosis said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you only have three weeks left... to write the first draft of your thesis." So that is what I am up to—camped out in the Black Diamond Library with a reading room full of Danish university students. There are bright sides... comfortable desks, a nice cafe right on the water for lunch and coffee breaks, no distractions to speak of, grey skys and windy drizzle outside...

* * * November 4th * * *

Last week I went to an election party at a little travelers cafe/bar with a few American friends. The place was pretty packed with American ex-pats as well as Danes and others, all gathered to watch live coverage on CBS. Everyone was drinking American pale ale, popcorn was free and the energy was high. I would have liked to have been in Seattle with the time clock on my side though... just about 4 am rolled around and things were still not settled on this side of the world. That was about as late as I could go! It was cool to hear people all over the city talking about the election... even though Danish is Greek to me, I overheard the words "Obama" and "McCain" all day! Good times!

Statens Museum for Kunst

Last week I went to the State-run art museum in the city center. I've been to so many museums in Denmark, it's kind of funny that I waited so long to go to the big national one right here in Copenhagen. There is a an older building (Vilhelm Dahlerup 1896) and an addition (Anna Maria Indrio 1998). The addition is attached to the old building by a full height atrium space (shown above) which is pretty nice, but probably hard to curate. Several small sculptural works all but disappeared in the huge room... but the overall effect with the park views on both sides and the exposed back facade of the original building is quite nice. I might have museum fatigue at this point, because the whole place left me feeling just a bit indifferent.