Me as a pict…

For Halloween in 2007 I dress up as a scottish pict! I’ve been meaning to post these pictures ever since I started this blog, just because they are so cool! The funny thing was, I used blue stamp ink for the war paint (I wonder what they used back then…) but it took many washings for it to come off! I was blue for a while!

No way do I want to forget this…

So, I said the main reason I posted those videos in my last post was because I wanted to be able to find them again…well, here’s another!

Laughter that will hopefully cure sickness…

I’m sure that many of you who have contact with me outside of my blog know that I’ve been sick since June 19th…with many different diagnoses…and not, those are not diagonal noses…which means I’ve been sick for um…7 weeks! I’m trying to stay happy, and something that has sporatically helped me with this is the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green. They have a Youtube site with all of their videos, which are hundreds, so check them out. I found them because a friend showed me Hank’s first video of 50 jokes in 4 minutes…since then he’s done two other videos like that, and so I thought I would create a blog post of these videos to share them with you! (well, actually, I thought I would post them so that I have easier access to finding them among the hundreds of Vlogbrother videos…)
So, here they are! In order of appearance…

The Wedding Blog

So, I’ve created the priliminary wedding blog! You’ll find it at darbyandphilipp.wordpress.com!! (you might have to cut and paste into your address bar) Please visit us!

Der Heiratsantrag

Love does not consist in gazing at each other
but in looking together in the same direction.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’m sure many of my readers who are also my friends and family will not be too surprise to hear that….

Philipp and I are getting married!!!

Yes, it finally happened, the question has been popped! The real story is a long one, but that’s because Philipp and I have been talking about this for quite some time. I’ll try to sum it up!

After attending another wedding, I hinted to Philipp that now would be a good time for us, but the following day I felt a bit guilty for pressuring him and wrote him a “I’m sorry”/Love letter. After he read the letter, he was so cute and on cloud 9 that he proposed to me! It was very quaint and spontaneous (on both our parts, even though at the same time we were expecting it to be sometime soon), but as they said in the movie When Harry Met Sally: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life together, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!” So that was that!

I’m working on a wedding website as we speak, so there will be more information to come!

Here are a few pictures from last night and a picture of the ring I took this morning (it looks amazing in natural light!):

A new BMW Ad

I know I should loose my blogging license because I haven’t updated in SOOOO long! School and caught up to me, so it may be a while before I become totally active again. But I did want to post this ad I saw on TV for BMW…it’s pretty cool because all the cars featured are my buddies from the museum!

Paris, Part 1

It’s been over a month since I was in Paris! I need to get back into better habits about my blog! In any case, I am finally going to get these posts up…so here it goes!

My trip to Paris with “Historische Kunst- und Bilddiskurse” was from March 22 to the 27.  The first day we arrived in Paris, via TGV (an express train) was a Sunday, and already fairly late in the day.  We were welcomed by two of our professors and received an introduction to the week at one of their apartments, which included a small introduction to French cheese! I think I liked the cheese a little too much!

Afterward, once we had checked into out hotel and the sun had set, we set out on a introduction to the city of Paris and wondered the dark and mystic streets. Here’s a picture of our exploratory posse:

You can already see in the background of this picture what our next destination was. Actually, it was food…we were looking for a specially tasty falafel stand, but it just happened to be in the direction of the Pompidou!

Here you see the Pompidou lit up by night. It’s the famous art museum with the piping on the outside. There was an exhibit on Alexander Calder there that I would have very much liked to see, but the purpose of our excursion to Paris was to learn more about Symbolism, an art movement that took place at the end of the 19th Century. In the following blog posts I will get more into the details of the movement, the artists involved, and the museums we visited in their reference.

After finding food, we headed in the direction of the Île de la Cité, where Notre Dame is located. The night lighting and the bridges on the way were gorgeous:

We took a short stop outside the Notre Dame, and then a few from the company came up to me to tell me about the wonderful English bookstore on the south bank.  So many knew of it and like it, that we decided to detour over there. So we reached the Rue de la Bucherie:

The Street of the Bookshops! There was a lovely antique bookshop there as well as the English bookshop, where I contemplated purchasing Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray…it seemed befitting; the only novel written by one of  my favorite playwrights as well as a literary work of Symbolism…but in the end I shied away from either antiques or relevant literature, considering the additional weight on my back while traveling. However, as we were leaving the Rue de la Bucherie, I did find something quite close to my heart:

I just love this! It’s like a deja vu of culture…a moment of complete and total juxaposition completely out of left field…in a street in FRANCE…a sign in ENGLISH…selling cheap GERMAN books…wonderful!  I loved the subtlety of it was well, a very inconspicuous and cheap cardboard box!

We then slowly began our saunter back to the hotel…crossing back over the river Seine and catching our first glimpse at the Eiffel Tower. One of us wanted to wander off in that direction, but we decided to save that for a later night. From a bridge, I took two pictures:

Tried from the train ride and walking through the streets of Paris (no knowing what was in store for the next few days) we winding through the maze back to our hotel.  On the way we went through an underground shopping mall, the Forum des Halles (picture below) and then crashed into bed.

My room, which I shared with two other girls, was on the fifth floor of our quaint little youth-hostel like hotel.  The following morning we were surprised by tasty instant coffee in milk and a large baguette with butter and jam…the same breakfast we had the following four mornings, but which never got old! It became the morning fuel for what I’m starting to call “Art History Bootcamp”…but more on that in the following posts!

A Preview of Pah-rih…*insert silly French “huhn-huhn” laughter*

So, I will be writing a longer post about my trip to Paris for the seminar on Symbolism soon…this is the teaser trailer!

The last time I was in Paris was in the summer of 2000…believe it or not, 9 years ago!  When I was there, I had a picture taken of me in from of Picasso’s former studio near Montmartre.  9 years later I found myself in the same street and was surprisingly able to recognize the door after all that time! So here’s a Parisian time-warp for you:

Exkursion Bayerisches Barock

About a month ago I went on an excursion with “Historische Kunst- und Bilddiskurse” (my Master’s program) to academically celebrate the end of the semester.  First we had a project seminar in Höchstädt (actually in the palace there!) and then we continued on a overview adventure of Baroque churches in Bavaria, particularly those from Dominikus Zimmerman and his brother Johann Baptist Zimmerman. I don’t think I’ll go into detail about each church (could be a little over the top and most definitely repetitive), so I’ll list them all now, in case you care to google them: Kloster Maria Medingen, the Frauenkirche in Günzberg, Kartause Buxheim, Residenz and Kirche Kempten, Steingaden, Steinhausen (yep, that’s somewhere else!), the Wieskirche (you may have heard of that one…it’s protected by UNESCO), the beautiful library and church in Bad Schussenried, Ottobeuren (a name I’ll never forget), and the Johanneskirche in Landsberg an der Lech.

The thing I liked most about this excursion was the spectrum in which we explored, which allowed me to finally understand the difference between Baroque and Rococo architecture. Apparently the transition mainly took place in none of than the (then) country of Bavaria. I’ll get to that more specifically in just a bit…

Here’s the palace in Höchstädt where we spent about 10 hours a day in a workshop:

I have to say, I can’t really complain about the location! We also had a few breaks during the workshop in which we were given tours of the palace, which is partially restored and still undergoing the remaining restorations. In this wing we saw the restored frescoes:

I actually quite liked this restoration, as it did not have the goal of bringing the works back to their original quality by adding what was missing, but instead restored what was there and nothing more. It leaves the frescoes with a very rustic and authentic look. I was also quite amused that this wing of the palace actually housed a chapel for weddings! I was quite appealed myself, until it was pointed out that the frescoes in the chapel portray the Fall from Eden! Yikes! Get married and you’re thrown from Paradise! Actually, come to think of it, maybe the irony is, in fact, a good omen. Sort of a way to ward off those demons from the start.

Since we’re on the subject of the Fall, here’s a picture of some Baroque decorative sculpture from the church in Ottobeuren:

Now that’s some pretty cool decorative sculpture of an angel turning away from a dragon-like serpent trying to give it the apple, the forbidden fruit!  This was one of the cooler things in Ottobeuren that had to do with “cool” meaning interesting, but all in all, Ottobeuren was “cool” in the cold way! As we tried to leave the village in our two Mercedes buses, a blizzard came, and the bus I was in, along with 7 of my fellow students, got stuck in the snow! The bus literally slid off the road! We had to sit in a Thai food restaurant until the blizzard passed and then we took a taxi back to Kempten, where we were staying.  It turned out the bus we had had “all-weather” tires instead of snow tires…and if anyone ever tell you that there isn’t a difference between the two, tell them to talk to us! In an case, the situation seems funnier in hindsight and it was quite a bonding experience for us students!

In our homebase during the excursion, Kempten, we saw the Residenz and Baroque church.  Upon entering the Residenz, we had to wear felt shoes because of the inlay wood floors (also from the period!)…here’s a picture:

The Residenz was one of the prime examples we saw of the distinction between Bandelwerk, signifying Baroque design, and Rocaille, characteristic of Rococo decoration. To put a name to the face, or a guess an image to the Stuck, or plaster with which these ornaments were made:

To the left you see the Bandelwerk, which means ribbon work…very elegant and perhaps more my personal taste.  (I would suggest clicking on the thumbnails to see the larger photos…these things are very detailed!) On the right is the Rocaille, actually a French word describing a type of shell, which is why it has the shell-like and sea-creature form.

The Residenz in Kempten was a restored example of these architectual ornamentations. In this picture you can see a small section that the restoration workers did not restore, as a point of reference/comparison:

Restoring to the original colors really shows the artwork’s brilliance! It seems so dull otherwise!

In addition to learning about the architectural/ornamental styles and the relevance of restoration, I also gained some knowledge of Catholic iconography.  (I know, I should know these things…I just never had much connection with religions) For example, each Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) apparently have animal symbols: an angel, eagle, ox, and lion (in the same order).  I also learned the holy monograms, like the IHS for Jesus and this cool one for the mother Mary:

It creates the name “Maria.”

So, I’ve saved the best for last…in Bad Schussenried we visited an old convent, itself quite pretty, but hidden in one of its wings was the most beautiful library I have ever seen!  As an exception to the churches, monasteries, and convents that we had seen elsewhere, this library did not have religious iconography, but iconography from the 18th/19th century of the science and humanities!  Each corner of the library was dedicated to a different discipline: art, sculpture, architecture, and music!  It even had an early for of the scientific classification system portrayed as branches in a tree in the fresco on the ceiling! Here are the pictures:

I love this picture! All of the students are staring up at the fresco…in a way looking to the sky! as Dr. Frangenberg describes the iconography. (He’s the one standing in the back…our Baroque and Rococo expert)

And, of course, a picture of me proudly standing in the spectacle:

Yay! I’m so happy that I finally have this post done! It took me like, a month! My apologies once more for the delay…coming soon: Unsinniger Donnerstag in Mittenwald and Paris!

Baby stepping out of the Blog hiatus…

So, I’ve had more time to do nothing the last 3 days, after spending 11 days straight of standing for at least 6 hours a day in a museum, whether that be the BMW Museum or a museum in Paris (a post about that trip will be posted once I’m back into the swing of things!) I’ve concluded that the posts I should be making are all way to long and overwhelming for me to do as a jump back into the blog scene, so you just get a pointless post for now!

This is actually good, it gives me a chance to use some of the things in my wordpress folder that ususally just sit around…

Here’s a good start…a happy picture of me and Philipp:

Philipp will be going in for knee surgery next Monday! I know, quite sad, but think of it this way…he gets to have me as a servant for at least the first week while he can’t walk! He’s even decided he wants to get a bell to ring.  The upside for me is that for this week, Philipp and been getting up and going into the kitchen, etc. to get me things. Don’t worry, I know how to play it right!

What else have a got in this folder…oh! here’s a cool painting of the Munich skyline that I found on the outside of a tent at Oktoberfest.  Pretty random, but that’s exactly what this post is for:

And finally, to bring up the subject of the “new” (like the blog posts I will be making soon, right?!?!) I have a picture from Mad About You, with Murray the Magic Dog:

THIS IS NEW!!!