BACK TO FLORENCE ...

This would be my last « little trip » until after the holiday period. When retired, there is no reason at all for traveling during the main holiday season - July and August in Europe. This was the beginning of July so hopefully the crowds would not be too overwhelming. The last trip to Florence was with Gianni in January 2013. The weather had been reasonably good so I was taken on a « tourist » trip which I would never have done without him. Our main reason for going was the Bacon at the Palazzo Strozzi. Gianni made sure that I also visited Florence.


ANOTHER SLANT ON MODERNITY

This time I was going for the « Art of the Guggenheim Collections : From Kandinsky to Pollock » Along with another exhibition on abstraction today.

A trip which I had planned back in March.


Paris was overcast and cold when I left. Florence was 29° and humid. A huge difference. No-one likes the humidity but the heat again and blue sky was very different compared to our rotten Parisian summer. It was the end of the afternoon by the time l got to a rather scruffy hotel. My room left a lot to be desired. A piece of Kitch art in itself....

Not to worry, I would only be sleeping in it.


Off I trotted at a very steady pace and 15 minutes later there was the Palazzo Strozzi. 

The construction of the palace begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Maiano, for Filippo Strozzi the Elder, a rival of the Medici who had returned to the city in November 1466 and wanted the most magnificent palace to assert his family's prominence and, perhaps more important, a political statement of his own status. A great number of other buildings were acquired during the 70s and demolished to provide enough space for the new construction. Filippo Strozzi died in 1491, long before the construction was completed in 1538. Duke Cosimo I de' Medici confiscated it in the same year, not returning it to the Strozzi family until thirty years later. It’s all very Italian for me. I guess France had the same power struggles  amongst the different nobles but Italy seems to have enjoyed such conflicts over time in a dramatic manner.

What I didn’t know until arriving, is that the Foundation stayed open until 8pm. It was now 6-30 so I had a good hour and a half for my initial visit. To my delight there were very few people. 

This was the first exhibition to see assembled works of art from the museums of Solomon Guggenheim and his niece Peggy. What would we have done without that family and their collections of modern art? The exhibition presents masterpieces which help to define the very concept of modern art. The Guggenheims were passionate about the art of their own time and eager to acquaint the world with works of the Avant-garde. Peggy introduced modern European art to the new world of American painters and sculptors and helped these young an upcoming American artists to make a name for themselves. Jackson Pollock was just one of them and also an artist who had a profound effect on European art. Also Peggy began to assemble while in Europe in the late 1930’s an extraordinary collection of Surrealist and abstract art.



Kandinsky (1866-1944) you know is an artist I appreciate. This painting "Dominant Curve" done in 1936 he considered to be one of his best from his French period. Would you believe it was not even in the little brochure I bought? The exhibition opened with this painting and l could stand there alone admiring it.

"Verso l'alto" 1929

Dominant Curve - 1936

On my left was Max Ernst (1891-1976)  "The Kiss" (1927) a manifesto of surrealist art and the picture used to advertize the Strozzina exhibition in 1949.

The Kiss - Max Ernst 1927

Surrealist art has never been my cup of tea but if we are talking about Jackson Pollock…..

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and his Action painting became in the space of a few years one of the United States most celebrated artists of his generation. Thanks mainly to Peggy Guggenheim’s unflagging support. Early on he had been working as a carpenter in the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum and was given a contract by Peggy in 1943 that allowed him to focus solely on his art. Unfortunately we were not able to take photos. The little brochure I bought (the catalogue weighed a ton) doesn’t show the incredibly influence of Picasso and Surrealism on his work. When you look at his dripping technique, it’s difficult to imagine that he knew what he wanted for the final result. So many of my friends take it as a « messy mess » . I can look at his work for long stretches and always discover something new.

Untitled - 1949

Watery Paths - 1947

Abstract Expressionism. It was undoubtedly Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) who was one of the movements most representative figures. I have always liked his work. Its full of symbols and seems to create new compositions when you looked at it from different angles.

William de Kooning - Composition 1955

Jean Dubuffet "Propitious Moment" 1960

 Post War Europe. The move in America was towards a new abstract trend, but in Europe two leading artists were already experimenting and anticipating new forms of abstraction. Lucio Fontana in the 1930’s and Dubuffet  (1901-1985) in the 1940.

Lucio Fontana - "Spacial Concept" - 1951

I agree with many people that it’s not easy to appreciate Fontana’s (1899-1968)  slashed paper, but this particular painting I really did like. Anger Jorn was also an artist experimenting different forms and l certainly liked this.

Asger Jorn - Untitled, 1956

One of the painters Peggy followed was Francis Bacon. She hung the « Study for a Chimpanzee » (1957) in her bedroom in her Venetian home, the Palazzo Venier.

Francis Bacon "Study for Champanzee" 1957

The Mark Rothko gallery took my breath away. 6 paintings were shown in a dark gallery and were back lit. They cast strange and beautiful shadows on the floor. I had never seen Rothko’s work lit like this. Truly magnificent.

Mark Rothko "Sacrifice" 1946

Pop Art arrived on the scene with Roy Lichenstein’s « Preparedness painted in 1968. A new era in contemporary art was born. Nothing would be  quite the same again.

Roy Lichenstein "Preparedness" 1968

Other artists were included in the wonderful retrospective. Calder of cause. This was a new concep for me. Pieces of glass....

Alexander Calder - mobile 1934

I probably should had lugged that catalogue home - but where would I put it? I would visit this exhibition a second time before I left to come home to Paris.

In this period, I am in my element. There were other artists too but I'm still looking at those and hesitating...

The Strozzi Café

Dinner was a late affair in the Strozzi cafe. I couldn’t believe that it had turned from a traditional Italian café into a Japanese restaurant.







No way I would face the crowds in the exhibition the following morning. It would be later in the day. In front of the Uffizi and on the place, this is what I came across. Crowds closely knit together in very humid conditions. Nope, not for me. Although the Pitti Modern art museum was showing the Lagerfeld exhibition which I had not seen in Paris, the queue was daunting too. I wouldn’t do that either.

Piazza Signoria

Uffizi Gallery and the crowds

Uffizi Gallery and the crowds

I wondered back over the Pont Vecchio. It really is an emblematic feature of Florence. All those little jewelry boutiques - crowded or empty. I was not hanging around. Back again and this time I would take the little back streets to escape the crowds.

From the Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio

What do I see but this as I wandered into the Palazzo Vecchio. Tempting to drop in and see how Jan Fabre deals with the relationship between the Renaissance art and contemporary beetles!

2012 Skull with Squirrel -mixture of jewel winged beetle cases

Armour (Collar) 1996

Globe 2000

Fallen Angel 2000

Behind the globe

Shall he forever stand with feet set close together?

Shall he forever stand with feet set close together?1997

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I had also forgotten the very famous map room in this Palazzo and was happy to see it again. At least it was relatively quiet.

Palazzo Vecchio

My intention was to go up to the tower and look at the fabulous view of Florence. The 220 steps put me off completely. Yet I had done it with Gianni. Four years older and that made a difference.

From the Museo Galileo

From the Museo Galileo

Then a discovery. The Museo Galileo. That l have never visited.
It owns one of the world’s major collection of scientific instruments, which bears evidence of the crucial role that the Medici and Lorraine Grand Dukes attached to science and scientists. The Museo di Storia della Scienza re-opened to the public under the new name Museo Galileo on June 10, 2010, after a two-year closure due to important redesigning and renovation works. It was inaugurated just four hundred years after the publication in March 1610 of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius. Fascinating. Lovely to see parents with their children. Mostly Italian so  I wasn’t going to learn to much by listening into the comments. These are some of the objects I saw - with my sparse comments……

1667

 This is an Italian  quadrant

Nautical instrument 1597

Astronomical Clock 1564

Astronomical Globe around 1600

Armillary Sphere Florence 1558-1593

 "When I raise my eyes to the sky, I see earthly things as well", 1588


This is in gilt and painted wood. A model of the universe. The rings represent the orbits of the planets.

Celestial Globe in paper, wood. It also depicts the constellations giving their names in Italian, Latin, Greek and Arabic. Made by Vincent Coronelli in 1692

Celestial Globe - German, 1790

Terrestial Globe, 1688

Bust of Galileo, 1674-1677: Carlo Marcellini 

Centre piece - ananymous. 17thC

Crab shaped "capriccio" glass - 17thC

Siphon barometer. Early 18thC

1764

The writing hand by Friedrich von Knaus . What's more is that it is a real automat. The clockwork mechanism moves the hand causing it to dip the pen into an ink stand  and write on a small card "To this House God has no limits, nor deadlines."

Obsterical models

Obsterical models

Obsterical models

 Evidence of the collectioner's strong interest in medicine is shown by these remarkable objects. There were 40 terracotta models made for educational purposes.

Telescopes first half of the 19thC

Repeating circle early 19thC

This is a burning lense created by Bregans in 1697. It was used to study the effect of combustion of different minerals and gemstones

Scale from London in the 19th C

Very modern now. Winston Field created by Ncholas Holmes in England in 2014










Time was moving on.

There was one last exhibition that l wanted to see. « Figurative Art Today » comprising works of 46 international contemporary artists who had been selected to mark the Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016. Needless to say I had never heard of it. Now I know that it is English. It started off in the UK and attracted crowds,  then between 1st and 24th July it on at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the city where Western Art began. They say it is a  way  « to probe the relationship between art and figuration today, taking a fresh look at such traditional genres as portrait painting, landscape painting and still life ».

« The exhibition has already attracted huge interest from Italian national and regional press. This is partly as Palazzo Strozzi is the first Italian venue to host this prestigious exhibition, but also because of the number of younger, emerging artists selected. The exhibition fosters an important moment of exchange and debate on contemporary art at the international level. »

Photos could be taken and if it was attracting huge crowds, we were only three in the centre. The other two left hastily and I was alone.

So this is contemporary art today? Figurative? Even the winner did not really make me jump up and down in my usual enthusiastic way.

Lewis Hazelwood-Horner, « Salt in Tea »

« Lewis Hazelwood-Horner was announced as winner of the 2016 Columbia Threadneedle Prize, Europe’s leading open competition for figurative and representational art. Lewis receives a cash prize of £20,000 and a solo exhibition for a wider body of his work at Mall Galleries later this year.


His work, Salt in Tea, was painted following a two-year residency at the bespoke umbrella shop James Smith & Sons in London’s West End.  The title refers to when the craftsmen jokingly put salt or too much sugar in one another’s tea. Hazelwood-Horner attended the Byam Shaw School of Art (2010-11) and the London Atelier for Representation Art (2012-14) ».

I didn’t even take a photo of it so this is from Internet.

Others too were not frankly very innovative. Perhaps l was at saturation point and yet I took my time trying to work out why such a collection of works was the answer to today’s Figurative work.

Penelope Smith "Stuart and Ukelele" 2014

Nicholas Holmes "Winston Field" 2014

Nicola Bealing "Trannack Misfits" 2015

Roger Woodiwiss "Seaside" 2014

Part of seaside

Oliver Bederman "Tony Bederman" 2015

Robert O'Brien "Ched" 2015

Rebecca Harper "The Yes & The No Pile" 2015

On the right of the "Yes and The No Pile"

Julia Hamilton "Patti" 2015

Sarah Ball "Immigrant lll" 2015

Edward Anthony "Ron Arad" 2014

Susanne du Toit "Waiting for Flex" 2014

Delphine Hogarth "New Landscape" 2015

J. Carlos Naranjo "After the Battle" 2015

Stephen Read "Too Much Intelligence" 2015

Alison Boult "From the Ballon" 2015

Chris Thomas "Sheep with the Lambs" 2014

Peter Clossick NEAC "Summer Solstice" 2015

Holly Zandbergen "The River Child" 2015

Gareth Kemp "A Germanic Landscape" 2015

Howard Read "The Lost Estate" 2015

Frankly, many of the titles seemed to have no sense to them for me.

By now it was well after 8pm and tonight I would go to the restaurant the hotel had recommended. I’m glad I did. Not a tourist in sight. A very macho director who refused to speak anything but Italian. Fortunately I could understand enough to have a beautiful dinner. Being alone l could look around me. There were a couple of men dining alone watching a screen (probably the football) so I conspicuously stood out from the rest of the crowd as the only woman -alone -

Tomorrow it was back to Paris. 35° when I left Florence  and 26° when I arrived in Paris. Summer was here.