Album of the Day: Unmusique – Lucy Bedroque
Today, we took a break from the Netherlands and ventured our way to the great town of Münster, Germany. Münster is a small religious town near the Germany-Netherlands border which, like many towns in Germany, was heavily bombed during WWII. Post war, the city entered a reconstruction phase, but unlike a lot of other German cities and towns, there was a heavy emphasis on keeping its old style as opposed to just creating efficient and fast brick buildings. The town is very pretty, featuring its fair share of churches and historical landmarks that serve as tourist attractions and important local spots of worship and history. Due to its almost full reconstruction, it has a lot of modern design features mixed into the architecture and design of the city. Just like many German cities, it features extensive bike lane systems and circular roads that circle the city for easy car access without destroying the original design of the historical city center. Its historical design mixed with newer bike lanes and transport infrastructure makes the town surprisingly sustainable.
Outside of the historical and sustainability aspects we learned on a tour, we also received an unprecedented amount of free time today. This free time allowed us to partake in the glorious European pastime of eating pastries and drinking coffee or tea while doing nothing on a random day at 11 am. It also allowed us to go try German cuisine for the day. I got to enjoy an authentic German schnitzel at a small café our tour guide recommended. We also had plenty of time to explore the town, which led us to the small Picasso Museum. The museum was okay, featuring work mostly by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, which had a lot of work depicting objects wrapped in cloth and rope as a way to “preserve” them. I thought their work was quite boring and pretentious, being art made for people who pretend this stuff has a massively deep meaning but ultimately not providing a substantial critique on anything interesting. Christo also went on record calling Picasso’s later work bad while creating art that seemed heavily inspired by Picasso’s architectural work. Overall, I think this Christo guy was lame and his art shows how stuck up and cool he thought he was with his idea of preservation. Aside from him, there was some interesting Picasso work, highlighting his idea of reducing something to its most basic components. I find that this exhibit contrasts Christo’s idea of preservation by actually trying to retain what’s most important about a creature or object instead of just covering it completely. I thought the museum was interesting but ultimately just ok compared to a lot of the museums we’ve been on this trip, especially compared to FOAM in Amsterdam, which had an exhibit that I find better exemplifies the idea of preserving a moment in time through photography instead of painting and other physical forms of media.
