Paris

- "Modern Collections from 1905 to the 1960s" & "Contemporary Collections from the 1960s to today", and "Paris-Delhi-Bombay" @ Centre Pompidou (Musee national d'art moderne). I wasn't sold on the building - it's a bit obvious - but the two showpiece collections are both very good, starting from Matisse and fauvism, and aiming for a representative survey of the major movements since. (I only skimmed through the "Paris-Delhi-Bombay".)
- (A literary walking tour with Sarah V). We always said that maybe one day we'd meet in Paris and, five and a half years on, finally did; Sarah picked me up in the morning and took me on a day-long literary ramble, concentrated around the 5th and 6th - one of the highlights of the whole trip.
- Musee des arts et metiers. I'm not normally all that interested in how things work, but this museum did sound kind of cool, and it was. Plus, it's the home of Foucault's pendulum. (Meribah - who, by happy coincidence, was reading Eco's book at the time)

Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Goon Squad

Just as good as its victory in this year's Tournament of Books would lead you to expect. It's about time, and turning points, and what it is to be human and alive; the sentences are wonderful, the characters affecting and real. Reading it, one feels happy, sad, reminded of how deep life runs, the piercing everyday specificity of all the moments and choices and actions that make up a life. Despite the formal playfulness of the 'linked short pieces' structure, there's something unassuming about Goon Squad; for all that, it's a quiet marvel.

Elizabeth Knox - The Vintner's Luck

A while back I ended up with a $250 Borders voucher, asked a few people for one book suggestion each, and then bought them. I'm not sure, but I think The Vintner's Luck is the first that I've got around to reading - Kelly's suggestion, and while I'd normally have been very dubious about the premise (Burgundy, 1808: a young vintner meets an angel in his vineyard and they agree to meet every year thereafter on the same date), she was spot on as usual. It turns out to be a rather luscious, passionate novel, full of human and historical drama - and a love story on more than one level, too. I'm glad that I've read it.

Steven Erikson - The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach

Three short novellas focusing on the havoc wreaked by the eponymous pair, marginal travellers in the main series of books. Enjoyable and often darkly funny, and the action scenes have some bite; excitingly, the final book in that main series is out now.

Vienna

- Schloss Schonbrunn. Figured I wouldn't have time to make it to Versailles, so this was my chance to see a palace. It was actually kind of fun, if inescapably somewhat tacky; the gardens were worth the hour or so I spent in them, too.
- Albertina. Spent most of my time in the two showpiece exhibitions of works from the museum's permanent collection - "Albertina Contemporary: Gerhard Richter to Kiki Smith" and "Monet to Picasso". From the first, it was Richter's work that most appealed, some abstract, others blurrily representational, even the abstract ones bearing hints of the objects from which they're abstracted; liked the pop-inspired Raymond Pettibon pen and ink works too. The second was a pretty good survey; my favourites were Munch's sublime (in both senses) "Winter Landscape" (1915) and Paul Delvaux's mysterious nocturnal vista "Landscape with Lanterns".
- Haus Der Musik. An interactive sound museum, exploring the experience of sound and how it's processed by the brain. Cool, but seemed to do horrible things to my inner ear or something, leading to some nausea and dizziness...but apparently I'm a bit of a wimp about those things. (Ruth)
- Esperanto Museum. Part of the 'Collection of Planned Languages' in the Austrian National Library. Who knew? (Ruth)
- Globe Museum. Random, but why not? Claims to be the only museum world-wide where globes and globe-related instruments are acquired, investigated and displayed to the general public. It's sure an impressive collection. (Ruth)
- Wiener Riesenrad. I have a weakness for ferris wheels; we went a night; the view was memorable; the amusement park in which the wheel sat, less so. (Ruth)
- Belvedere. Only went to the upper Belvedere - the permanent collection. Klimt and Schiele were the main events and neither are particular favourites of mine, but it was worth seeing a whole lot of their (and other Vienna/Austrian) artists' work together.

Europe museum and gallery round up - Berlin

Briefly (and incompletely):

- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of England. The memorial itself is impressive, public art with a sense of weightiness owing at least in part to (but not wholly dependent on) its object. The underground information centre was good too - very sombre-making. (w/ Jade, Ruth)
- Deutsches Historisches Museum. Large, well put-together survey of German and pre-German history and culture, from 100BC to today (or near enough - 1994). Impossible to go through comprehensively, but it held my attention, and I'm not normally one for historical museums at all. (Jade)
- "Based in Berlin" @ Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. Part of a wider set of exhibitions of contemporary Berlin art. Didn't especially take me. (Ruth)
- Hamburger Bahnhof. Several exhibitions in a wonderful space. I liked the large-scale Richard Long pieces laid out on the floor and far wall of the central hall/exhibition space, but the Rieckhallen, a long, converted basement space accessible from the main building by a long corridor, provided a true highlight, filled with a great range of 20th C and contemporary art set out in a series of bare, industrial chambers. To name just a few: Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, and Gordon Matta-Clark are represented with characteristic, and striking, pieces; Donald Judd's "Untitled (Bull Nose Progression)" also left an impression. And three others whose names I hadn't heard before particularly impressed me - Jeff Wall's "Little Children" (three circular photos mounted high on a wall, porthole style, each with a child shot against a moody sky backdrop - accompanied by a model pavilion and exterior/interior schematics by Dan Graham with the circular photos inside), some deceptively flat, plain paintings by Thomas Schutte ("Museum", "Sackgasse", "Tor"), and Bruce Nauman's darkly Beckettian installation "Room With My Soul Left Out, Room That Does Not Care". (Ruth)
- Museum Berggruen. Smallish but carefully chosen collection of key classical modernists with a strong focus on Picasso. Also, some very nice Klees, and Matisse and Giacometti plus a couple of Braques. (Wei)
- "Surreal Worlds" @ Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg. A mirror building to the Berggruen (spiral staircase and gallery layout), just across the road. Exhibition covers early antecedents of surrealism (inc. Max Klinger and of course de Chirico), then running through the usual suspects, though disappointingly light on for Magritte. Tanguy's "Je suis venu, comme j'avais promis, Adieu" was a delightful discovery. (Wei)
- Australian Chamber Choir 2011 European Concert Tour - Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church. Europe dates were planned in part to be in Berlin to coincide with the choir's touring itinerary, since not only is ZG a standing member, but Kim was also touring with them. Enjoyed it, though I wasn't much of a fan of the (divisive) final work, Philip Nunn's "I Heard The Owl Call My Name". (Wei & others)
- "1900-1945: Modern Times. The Collection" @ Neue Nationalgalerie. A hot day, to the point of oppressiveness, as it was for much of my stay in Berlin, and I was pretty tired, so not ideal circumstances. Still, a cool ven der Rohe building, some nice pieces, and it contributed to my sense of the overall landscape of early 20th C German art, plus I discovered Georg Schrimpf ("Rundfunksender (Furstenfeldbruch)" [Radio transmitter], "Bahnubergang" [Railway Crossing], "Zwei Madchen am Fenster" [Two Girls By the Window]), whose elegant, finely rendered paintings reminded me of de Chirico's metaphysical style and appealed to me very much. (Kim)

A quick round up

Thursday night, last minute trip organisation in full swing (flights and accommodation in process of getting worked out, packing not so much as yet); tomorrow's a work day and will be out at night, then flight out's Saturday; thought I ahould do a quick few capsule notes before the upcoming month in Europe obliterates all recollection.

* * *

Seeker Lover Keeper - Seeker Lover Keeper

As sweet as you'd expect a Sally Seltmann / Sarah Blasko / Holly Throsby collab to be. Best is "Even Though I'm A Woman", followed by "If the Night is Dark" - both Seltmann-composed (though Throsby sings the former), which is unsurprising given that she seems to be some kind of low-key songwriting genius, without meaning any disrespect to Sarah Blasko, who is also clearly lovely and amazing.

* * *

Deb Olin Unferth - Revolution

I'm not much of a one for memoirs, but I read some extracts in Believer and have read a bunch of interesting bits and pieces written by Unferth elsewhere on the internets and that was enough for me to order Revolution and her debut novel Vacation from bookdepository. So Revolution is very winning and full of great writing and unforced neatnesses; I liked it a lot.

* * *

"Moth" (Declan Greene - Malthouse)

Very impressive; reminded me a little of "Terminus" from a couple of years back - high praise - in its fluidity and confident theatricality (for want of a better way of putting it). Sharply, authentically, pungently written; it uses dialogue and stage in service of a work that couldn't have been done better in any other form. It employs artistry in the service of the everyday, or maybe vice versa, or more likely still, both at once.

(w/ Sunny, Kai + Neil, Hayley and Adam W, & C)

* * *

"Princess Dramas" (Elfriede Jelinek - Red Stitch)

Stylised, disorienting, challenging - I had to work at this while watching it, consciously trying to be open to what it was doing and suspending/interrogating various immediate reactions, principally aesthetic and linearity (not just in the narrative sense) oriented ones. I have a feeling that the production, while vivid, may have obscured the words of the play itself but maybe that's unavoidable. "Princess Dramas" is the most difficult play I've been to for a while, but with more time to chew it over, it may well be one of the more rewarding; at any event, I've been sufficiently intrigued to try to track it down in translation.

(w/ C)

* * *

"A Golem Story" (Lally Katz - Malthouse)

A much more traditionally narratival,character-y work than Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, and a lavish, sumptuously mounted thing it is. It's played relatively straight in its telling of the legend of the golem of Prague, all enwrapped with Jewish mysticism, and it's certainly engaging, but for me didn't hit home as hard as it clearly aimed to. Good, very good actually, but for mine, doesn't quite have the whatever-it-is that just sets some theatre apart from the pack and makes it really special.

(w/ Kai + Neil, Adam W, Trang and David; Sunny also ended up coming with friend Anthony)

* * *

Kick-Ass & Scott Pilgrim vs the World

A matched pair of dvd hires (with C) - Kick Ass still kinetic and fun and slightly surprisingly hard-edged on a second viewing, Scott Pilgrim an unadulterated, snap-crackle-Pop delight, just like I'd imagined it would be.

"Whodunnit" (Playhouse Theatre, Hobart)

With all apologies, there's only so much to do in Hobart, so one night of our extended sojourn, we went to see this affectionate riff on the classic English country house murder mystery. It felt kind of provincial (would 'amateurish' sound less snobby?) - a nearby audience member actually took out a bag of nuts and started eating her way through it shortly after the second act started (average audience age: probably about 50) - but it was perfectly good natured, fine.

(w/ C)

Tina Fey - Bossypants

I do like Tina, of course I do, but this was slightly disappointing; I suppose the bar is set high by 30 Rock, so when Bossypants turned out to be more a few hours' worth of pleasant diversion with the occasional chuckle than cover to cover comic genius, there was a small element of let-down. Still, she makes the world a better place.

"Monanism" (MONA, Hobart)

MONA was what drew me to Tasmania, and happily I made it over there - with C - in time to catch the inaugural, eponymously apt exhibition. MONA itself is an impressive set-up, with its own ferry from town, a striking building housing the museum itself, very engaging and effective self-guided 'tour' material on customised ipods issued to all visitors at the door, and appealingly labyrinthine internal layout; we made a day of it - 11am ferry out, 5.30pm back, only a short break for lunch at the internal cafe - and while museum fatigue had started to set in by the end, I didn't feel close to having exhausted the art.

In part, that was because there's a focus on video and 'moving image' work (generally taking longer to absorb because of their specifically temporal dimension), reflecting the generally extremely contemporary flavour of the collection. There was something of a feel of the works being the collection of an individual (rather than an institution) - there were a few threads running through a lot of the works, particularly certain expressionist-surrealist and kitsch-grotesque elements, as well as a bit of a Romantic streak, although a thoroughly post-modernist, contemporary flavour is very much dominant in the exhibition as a whole.

There weren't many individual pieces that really stood out at the time or immediately after, but with the benefit of the passage of a week or so, here are some that have particularly stuck:
* Reynold Reynolds - "Secrets Trilogy" ("Six Easy Pieces", "Secret Life", "Secret Machine"). I stood there and watched the whole of this, a series of stop-motiony HD video transfers from 16mm and stills that reminded me of Svankmajer's Alice, cryptic meditations on art, science, philosophy, consciousness, corporeality, nature, life.
* Patrick Hall - "When My Heart Stops Beating". In a room - on one side, a wall of square boxes that can be pulled out to intone, repeatedly, 'I love you' and reveal a poetic, elliptical set of thoughts about love and loss; and on the facing side, a wall of vinyl records, spinning, each in its constituent layers radiating out from the centre. In some ways obvious, but also cute, and not entirely unaffecting.
* Anselm Kiefer - "Sternenfall / Shevirath Ha Kelim". A large room, unusually (for this exhibition/gallery) well lit by sunshine from outside. Large lead books, shattered glass on the floor. Monumental and personal. Unsurprisingly, artist studied law, literature, linguistics.
* Balint Zsako - Untitled (2010). Two women painting themselves then the canvas in a giddy flurry of inky, acrylic and water colour.
* Nolan - "Dog and duck hotel". A painting of a duck in the air alongside a hotel. Appealing. Curious.
* Callum Morton - "Babylonia". From outside, it's a huge, knobbly rock. You walk inside and find yourself in a low-ceilinged hotel-style corridor, swirling Italian-sounding romantic music, a mirror at either end of the corridor reflecting into infinity, all very Alice in Wonderland.

... and there are scattered images from others that have stuck in my mind, too, fragmented, disjointed, adding to an already cluttered internal associative landscape, which is all to the good.

All in all, a very satisfying trip.

Baskery - Fall Among Thieves

Kind of a blues-roots-country-jam thing - 'noise and beats' (Greta Bondesson), 'bottom and rattle' (Stella Bondesson), 'rhythm and whine' (Sunniva Bondesson), banjo and all - created by a trio of Swedish sisters. Enjoyable, but not memorable; best moment is the slamming, knees-up "One Horse Down".

Ghost World

...and another; like Heathers, its impact now diminished, though I still remember how it made me feel on first encounter.

(Previously - the first time, then the second.)

Heathers

Sometimes a film can be a signpost, different each time you come to it. Last time I watched Heathers, about six years ago, its razor-sharp, barbed edge and midnight-black satire still had an immediacy to it; this time, the primary register for me was nostalgic, a reflection of the different point in my life that I'm at...six years is a long time.

Source Code

Watchable, but really nothing special, neat premise notwithstanding.

(w/ C & Sunny + Sunny's friend Katherine)

"Six Characters in Search of an Author" (La Mama)

Lively, engaging, enjoyable staging of the Pirandello in the intimate surrounds of the La Mama theatre; as called for by the play itself, thematises and then obliterates the fourth wall with a touch at once light and serious.

(w/ C)

Terry Pratchett - I Shall Wear Midnight

He just keeps on keeping on; while Pratchett's more recent books have lost half a yard in laugh out loud-ness, their quality has remained remarkably high considering the number he's turned out, the large majority Discworld novels. I Shall Wear Midnight, a Tiffany Aching entry, continues the run - without in any way setting the world on fire, it's a very good read.

Shane Jones - Light Boxes

A quirky little bit of metafiction; on the insubstantial side, but good.

Fish Story

Quietly whimsical Japanese film in which an obscure (pre-Sex Pistols) punk song saves the world from comet destruction decades later. (See also, in far more riotous vein, this one.)

Craig Mathieson - Playlisted

A collection of short essays, each nominally about a song, more broadly about the artist behind the song, and (usually) more broadly still about some aspect of Australian music or pop music generally (there's one exception, a slightly longer piece on possible de facto Australian national anthems). Nicely contemporary, and hits on most of the biggest and most prominent - and representative - acts going around, most of which I've heard a lot on the radio over the years. A pretty good read, though more as a diversion than for anything more substantial.

Sucker Punch

A great big spectacle - it holds the attention and it's exciting, steampunk zombie nazis and all. But as visually striking as the film is, and as vividly realised, it's as if some more subcutaneous imaginative layer is lacking - I'm not sure whether it's in the vision or the execution - something that would have given Sucker Punch an extra dimension that would have raised it from the level of 90 minutes' simple entertainment to the something more that it seems to aspire towards.