While real life - especially my job - is keeping me rather unpleasantly full-time busy, nature around me is changing from late summer into autumn. Autumn, besides spring (and snowy winter),  is one of my most favourite seasons. So, the last weekends, I grabbed my camera and headed off into the green-red-yellow-orange "wilds".
Thought I'd share. And apologies: I'm still failing spectacularly to catch up with all your latest posts.




( For more, peek behind the cut. )

Last Sunday I visited my first gallop-race: the Great Dallmayr Price 2008 at the former Olympia horse-riding field at Riem near Munich. It was fun. Taking photos was even more fun and so I now proudly present some of the best shots.




Photographing a horse race is not at all easy. Firstly, you have to find a suitable spot to take the photos, with the sun preferably in your back and no other visitors blocking your view or your motif. Secondly, you have to be quick because a gallop-race is rather fast and you have no time to focus the shot. Well, I'm rather new to this, but I really start to like it. A lot. And thanks to digital photographing (I'm working with the EOS 400 D reflex camera from Canon) you don't need to worry about the photos that didn't work out.

Curious?

Aubrey Beardsley, Le Morte D'Arthur.

Just came upon that beautiful poem (found here), late-Arthurian-Revival. The eighth stanza is the most compelling one, I think.

First apologies for my absence and irregular commenting. I was busy with real life.
From now on, my lj-account will probably be only used for personal stuff, for reading and commenting. My new posts about art related topics I will publish at my new blog. I would be really happy if you would find your way over there as well!!!

My newest post at  my blog is about Mac Harshberger and Fernande Biegler. Two art déco illustrators from the beginning of the 20th century.


Mac Harshberger, Tristan and Iseult, 1927.

The past three days I spent in Vienna with wonderful summer-ish weather (and I was prepared for rather cold temperatures)  mostly to photograph the last few buildings adorned with fairy tale motifs for the publication of my dissertation, but I also found some time to visit a few sights and museums such as the Belvedere, the Collection Leopold and its special exhibition on the works of Albin Egger-Lienz or the Albertina with its special exhibition of the Collection Batliner and Max Ernst's Une semaine de bonté (on which I plan a special entry on lj).

In Bavaria, Germany, there is this tradition of painting murals on the facades of houses. It is called  "Lueftlmalerei" (and sorry I have no clue how to translate that). Oberammergau, a small town in the  Allgau region, most popular for its passion-plays around Easter, has a variety of houses that are painted this way, but the chosen motifs do not belong to the Christian iconography or the everyday life as usual but show scenes from fairy tales.

A few weeks ago I was in an exhibition displaying Scythian craftsmanship found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia (exhibition at the Hypo-Kunsthalle, Munich, Germany). The Scythians were horse-riding nomads, who dominated the Pontic steppe from ca. 600 BCE to 300 CE. The exhibition showed gold necklaces of intricate design, "flakes" in the shape of animals originally stitched on the clothes of the buried, golden ornament-applications for saddle and snaffle, etc., that were utterly beautiful.


Additionally they presented the context of the exhibits with models of the burial mounds, photographs of the uncovered graves and - as if the extensive photographic documentation had not been enough - the mummy of a prince and the skin of a human arm showing the typical Scythian tattoos that normally cover arms and shoulder of the Scythian males. The exhibition-curator obviously deemed it necessary not only to show a design of these tattoos but to also present the skin of the arm stretched out like tautened fur in order to show the real tattoo. I honestly have never seen anything more disturbing.

Back from my nine-days trip to the North-Sea island Spiekeroog, I am re-installed in real life and have to admit: the holidays were far too short for being really recreative. Nonetheless, someday in the future, I desperately want to live near the sea.  So a few photos that were taken while wandering over this beautiful island will have to prove the point. I am definitely a sea-person.








On the way home, we made  a short stop at Bremen and visited the city and two exhibitions featuring Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907).


Paula Modersohn-Becker
Self-Portrait, ca. 1905.
Oil/canvas, Kunsthalle Bremen





Finally, on request of baleanoptera, I am going to do the icon-meme.

Original idea: I'll choose seven userpics from your profile and you'll reply here (or you know, your own journal, whichever), explaining what they mean and why you're using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along.

The humorous weekly magazine "Fliegende Blätter" (flying sheets) was published 1844 to 1944 in Munich (publisher: Braun & Schneider) with works of prominent artists and caricaturists such as Wilhelm Busch, Adolf Oberländer, Franz von Pocci, Lothar Meggendorfer, or Hermann Vogel. The publisher of this magazine, Braun & Schneider, also edited the "Bilderbogen" (for explanation see the following post, further down the page).

I just finished my copy of Clemence Houseman's Sir Aglovale de Galis.... and it's brilliant! -- I highly recommend it!