Zurich Day Two

Today we walked ALL around the older part of town, just sightseeing and looking around. The old quarter is mostly shops and restaurants, so it was fun to window shop and people watch. Zurich doesn’t have as many fashion faux paus as, say, Spain, but it does have its fair share. Let’s just say that today, which we were eating lunch, I spotted a man in a plaid cap, a tee shirt, and rubberized black leggings. They were SHINING in the sun and TIGHT.

We also walked to a few galleries in the area, just to get a taste of some of the local modern art. We originally thought we’d be visiting museums, because the guidebook made them seem much bigger, but really they were small, independent spaces that held rotating exhibitions by just one or two artists. The first gallery was quite interesting, as it featured just two artists. The gallery owner told us she picked them because of odd similarities she had seen between both their physical looks and the content of their work. The pieces were a mixture of chainsaw wooden sculptures and multimedia paintings. Most of the works contained figures with strange, mask-like faces, or birds that seemed to be whispering in the figures’ ears. It was compelling stuff, and both Erika and I really enjoyed the exhibit.

The second gallery was a bit strange. We found it, and were about to go in, but it just looked like an office building. The space was sectioned off into rooms, which each contained a set of tables and chairs, with a few art pieces thrown in. We were certain we were in the wrong place, because we could see very little art. The gallery own assured us that each space was supposed to represent a different collector’s home space, and represented their individual tastes, but to us it just looked like an office building with framed scrap paper hung on the walls. It was a little much for both of us, so we took a break for lunch and absolutely delicious hot chocolate.

After dinner, we walked around a bit more, visited Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of the Dadaists. It’s a small little café with gallery space underneath, where they have new shows and performances every In the front, they were selling (I think selling…) Urban Camouflage, which were paper pieces created to make one blend in with the expectations of the urban environment. There were Facebook badges, where you could clip status updates, and cardboard designer shoes to fit over your regular shoes, to make you appear more properly dressed. It was really cool, though a bit hard to grasp, as all the explanations were written in German.

In the back, there was another exhibition called “Die, Dada, Die,” in which two artists had purchased an original masterwork by Breughel the Younger of the Crucifixion from the seventeenth century and painted new demon faces over all the faces of the people in the crowd.

I just didn’t know what to think. I mean, I understand the concept of building upon an older work, and of challenging the sacred aspect of “master” works of art, but couldn’t they have used a copy? They’re currently buying other works by famous artists, and intend to expand the series, but it just seems disrespectful to the original artists. I know that is somewhat the intent, but I just can’t get behind the project. The end result turned out really cool, like play on one of those older depictions of Hell, but it just seems wrong to destroy something just to prove a point.