Location: Kunst Haus Museum, Zurich
“The music of expressionism and contemporary art exhibit”
Going with Hedi Ernst (http://www.arthke.com) turned a typical touristy museum day into an in depth art lesson on German and French expressionism. Hedi explained how expressionism took flight in Europe and how to see the art in a way I hadn’t before. She encouraged me to avoid thinking about what the artist intended and focus instead on what it brings up personally. That’s the point, she argued. A good work of art has different meanings. It’s personal to everyone. I always enjoyed fauvism and Impressionism in painting, but Hedi made me think of it in entirely different way. As she showed me the progression of style, I saw the leaps each artist made and could appreciate the risks. They allowed themselves to do things differently: they used different brush strokes and colors that don’t exist in reality to create an emotion that does exist in the mind. It reminded me of Luis Borges, the first author to write magical realism. In both cases, the artist gives himself the right to bring something from their imagination (third eye, whatever) into the material world. It gives it this universal meaning because everyone’s connected on that invisible level.
