The Adventures of ChinChin

This morning as I lay in bed musing on the ways of the world, I had a rather delightful thought: my last two posts almost have an Indiana Jones-esque feel to them. They chronicle my adventures to far-flung locales and surprisingly do kind of relate to the titles of the Indiana Jones movies. 

To this end I now present the Adventures of ChinChin Jones:

ChinChin Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Art (a.k.a my trip to Louisiana Art Museum)

ChinChin Jones and the Holy Jar of Vegemite (a.k.a my trip to Malmo)

And coming soon to a Blog Post near you:

ChinChin Jones and the Temple of the Dead (cue: ominous organ music)

However, to tide you over till then I shall recount the tales of ChinChin and his faithful sidekick, Sanyo the wonder camera, and their escapades around Copenhagen over the last couple of weeks.

Escapade #1 - ChinChin goes to Statens Museum for Kunst.

Two weeks or so ago, ChinChin went to the Statens Museum here in central Copenhagen. He had heard about it from some friends of his and so thought it was worth a look. For the record, the Danish word Kunst means Art. The museum has a pretty vast collection starting from about 1300AD up to the present day. The Museum also has temporary exhibitions and on this particular day there was a Picasso exhibition and an exhibition of Bob Dylan paintings.

The bottom word is the Danish translation. Those strange Danes.

The general collections were certainly interesting, and a couple of the gallery rooms had walls covered in art. A lot of the older stuff started to look the same after a while though so ChinChin got a little bit bored and walked a little bit faster. There was also a whole wing dedicated to religious iconography like all the weird reliefs that have a really heavy focus on gold that you find in some Churches. ChinChin recalled that his parents have some pictures that are modern knock-offs in the same style as what he saw.

There was also a section dedicated to modern art some of which was, well, bizarre. Literally one of the displays was some piles of salt crystals on the floor with panes of glass joining them up. In the same vein, they have a room called the X-room which is for installations of modern artwork. ChinChin and the friend he went with were utterly bewildered by the random hodge-podge of, well, crap that littered the floor in the near pitch black room. ChinChin wonders whether the artist was making some grand interpretive statement about our evil ways of consumption. Or just plain high.

As for the special exhibits, well Picasso was a let down again just like in Raiders of the Lost Art (Louisiana). The focus was on two or three motifs that Picasso explored quite often and most of the pictures were just line drawings. ChinChin fails to see why people want to pay millions for that sort of artwork, other than being able to name-drop to the Joneses from number 42. To be fair, some of it was OK, like the series of 26 pictures that Picasso drew of a bullfight. The whole series took only 3 hours and was rather skillfully drawn.

However, the highlight for our favourite hero was the Bob Dylan exhibit. ChinChin states that all who have the opportunity to see it: MUST!!! It was really good. The exhibit was a series of paintings that Dylan did after a trip to Brazil in 2009. While he was there he did a series of pencil drawings that he then made a painted version of. Dylan's skill with the brush is exceptional. The focus was very much on the everyday world and not the sterile version that tourists see. That said, not one painting contained a trace of social commentary. They merely captured a scene. Absolutely amazing. 

ChinChin feels that he may like to go see it again.

Escapade #2 - ChinChin raids the Arken

ChinChin found out last weekend that the S-train is free to use on the first Sunday of every month. He was well-excited and decided to go down the coast to one of Copenhagen's outer suburbs called Ishøj (pronounced Iss-hoy) to a museum that featured in his guidebook called Arken Museum of Modern Art.

The Museum was just 200 metres from a beautiful sandy beach that had a power station at one end. It has a focus on modern art from the last 20 years or so, and while only a few pieces from the Museum's collection were on show, there were some really cool installations dotted around. They also had a couple of temporary exhibits. One of these was a tunnel that had been filled with a really dense fog and had different coloured lights at various points along it. It was also quite long, about 50 metres or so. Needless to say, ChinChin found it a truly freaky, haunting experience. 

Another highlight was a series of paintings called Welcome to the Jungle. They were exceptionally detailed and well done with an almost surreal mood in some. The other big exhibition was works by a Danish artist called Anna Ancher. The pictures were done in the late 1800s, which ChinChin found somewhat strange as this can hardly be considered post-1990s modern art. The pictures were primarily in pastel. She is apparently the only Danish woman to ever have a statue built to commemorate her (other than a Queen). Her pictures were certainly well-done but, again, not modern art so a slightly weird encounter. Perhaps there was an underlying commentary that good art is timeless.

There wasn't much else to see so ChinChin instructed Sanyo to take the obligatory picture of the building that was designed in the 80s and looks like a moored ship. ChinChin did find the really strange red writing on the wall quite the let-down to the overall effect of the building on its landscape. Equally bizarre was the stream of tourists that were standing against the white wall and having their photo taken from afar. Oh so very original.

Because the S-train was free ChinChin decided to keep going to the end of the line to a place called Køge. He came, he saw a port on one side and a charming village on the other, he felt rather underwhelmed, he left.

Escapade #3 - ChinChin learns the best Danish word ever: Gratis

Yesterday ChinChin went to the Glyptoteket, a sculpture museum here in Copenhagen. He had heard that it was gratis admission on Sundays. Gratis means free. Free is good.

The building was originally built in the late 1800s by the founder of Carlsberg Breweries and is filled with sculptures that he purchased every year. The Brewery has a Foundation that has purchased most of the art in many Danish museum collections.

Rodin's The Thinker

Highlights for ChinChin were the French sculptures by Rodin and others, the beautiful rooms that they were housed in, the special exhibition of mediterranean art from around 6000BC to the fall of the Romans that featured much pottery, and the happy joy in being able to take photos of anything you wanted as long as you didn't use flash on the paintings. Sanyo the trusty camera got an exceptional workout.

One particularly delightful sculpture was one of Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Thor looked bored, and a little glum. ChinChin mused that the source of Thor's boredom was likely the fact that the Danes converted to Christianity around 1000AD. Consequently the new entrants to Valhalla dropped off and the lack of new conversation topics after 1000 years would make even the most resilient Pagan god a little depressed.

While exploring the Mediterranean art, ChinChin unearthed a pure gold nugget of knowledge. We all know that purple dye is associated with royalty because it was so expensive to buy. ChinChin found out why: the Phoenicians (traders) produced the dye by harvesting special sea snails that produced it naturally along the eastern Mediterranean coast . It is estimated that it took around 8,000-10,000 snails to make ONE GRAM of purple dye. The Phoenicians were most active around 500BC.

A rather amusing observation that was noted was the lovely line of Danes patiently waiting for a table at the on-site cafe. The wait time was fairly considerable yet there they were. ChinChin was surprised they didn't have a special machine where they took a number and then waited their turn as is so common in every chemist shop and train ticket dispensary.

ChinChin's final activity was to gaze in glorious rapture at a Van Gogh painting, a thing of such whimsical beauty as to rend the very fabric of one's soul asunder. OK, admittedly that was a little gushy. To put it more simply: it was cool.

All in all, ChinChin and his faithful Sanyo mulled upon, and mused about, over 8000 years of human artistic endeavour just by exploring three different museums. So inspired by the magnificent displays of art was he, that he Drew a Picture. Yes it was a simple still life, yet it represents the first proper picture drawn in over seven years. In the words of our delightful Southern Californian friends: ChinChin was hella-happy.

Ciao!

Please note: I am still in possession of my sanity. Admittedly it is dangling from my windowsill begging for mercy... but its still within reach. The idea of today's post was to mix things up a little, inject some silly humour and make a parody of tourists and tourism. Hope you enjoyed!