MARe

Sometimes I want to believe that someone is arranging things for me and that it's not all just coincidence.

For some time now, I've been uncomfortable with myself and can't manage to do things that once seemed easy. A few external causes matter and influence my life now, and it would be easy to blame them. I've done that many times but it hasn't helped me.

I am now forced to admit that I alone am to blame for what is happening to me.

I have only one option left, to think I am at my manhood crisis at fifty... but I'm seventy!

What it is about now and what the writer (that's me, haha) wants to say.

Well, I'm very unhappy with myself for not being able to write as much and as often as I used to. When I see colleagues here writing almost every day, some even twice a day, it makes me dizzy. How can they do that, have they an endless wellspring of imagination?

Whilst these thoughts were running through my head I saw the weekly offering of theme suggestions for weekend posts:
Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK 214

I have often used this help in my frequent moments of lack of imagination. Most of these themes are an invitation to introspect and evoke aspects of life that I was not comfortable sharing. I guess I'm more descriptive than introspective and I like more to share what I see.

Coincidence?

There are six themes and only one is as descriptive as possible:

Showcase a local museum or art gallery in your home city - Use your own photos.

I have recently visited a few museums and I haven't decided to write about them yet.

MARe Museum in Bucharest, Romania

MARe means Museum of Recent Art, and the word "mare" means, in Romanian, big.

The large black building can be easily recognized by the sculpture at the entrance, which is a monument to scissors.

MARe is the first private museum dedicated, as its name says, to recent art of Romanian artists, more precisely, to art no older than 50 years. It also organizes exhibitions dedicated to the world's great painters, such as "The Picasso Effect" last November.

I visited this museum for the first time on the occasion of this unhoped-for exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso on loan from the Picasso Museum in Paris. I had the joy of being very close to the paintings and lithographs of one of the most important painters in the world.

I like this museum very much because it differs a lot, I'm talking about the architecture and the interior design of the building, from the classic museums which are made up of a few rooms with several paintings on the walls.

MARe is a modern and attractive museum and I am not talking about the exhibits. I am talking about the ambiance, the rooms, the color of the walls, the staircases, and the café on the ground floor.

When coffee is invoked I am very interested and I can say here that it is a pleasure to start touring the exhibition after a coffee break.

Café

Smoking terrace

After seeing the Picasso exhibition last year I made a promise to myself that I would never miss another exhibition hosted by this museum. So far I have kept my promise because the next exhibition, with modern contemporary Romanian art, exemplified by the paintings and sculptures belonging to this museum, is now open and I visited it at the beginning of July.

The current exhibition starts right from the café, with this representation of flags, the red (communist one) with the stars of the European Union and the blue (EU) with the communist hammer and sickle in the center!

I know it's not much but this work symbolises the freedom of expression that artists now have. Such a work in the past, in the communist period of the country, would have meant, for sure, imprisonment for the authors.

I will show you the first work with which the exhibition begins.

The materials are natural, hand-woven hemp canvas, filled with dried grass, and decorated with wildflowers. I don't know if I understand the meaning of the work, I think it's about protecting nature. Interestingly, we know the artist, Victoria Zidaru. When we meet her we will ask her to help us understand.

Modern art is hard to understand and equally hard to guess what the author had in mind when he made the work.

To prove it's as I said, I'll put some photos from the exhibition rooms...

I don't want to play the intellectual and art connoisseur and say that I understood what the artist wanted to express and liked everything I saw there. I didn't like it, but I left with a pleasant feeling that I had spent a few nice hours in that environment. I think a big part of that feeling was due to the way the museum is made and that whatever exhibition was there I think I would like it.