Next on my itinerary is getting from Seoul to Busan and boarding a freighter that will take me to Melbourne. http://www.freighterexpeditions.com.au/it-australia-to-china-via-south-korea  They only have two passenger cabins on board and you need to certify your physical and mental (!) health a month in advance, since there’s no doctor on board, just a first aid kit. Hm. A twenty day trip should not be so hard, camera in hand…..if necessary as a stow-away….

Just like Korea, Australia would be a first for me, but Banksy is not. And it looks like there will be a serious display of his art curated by his former agent (they have since parted ways under somewhat mysterious circumstances….)

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/12/melbourne-bansky-exhibition-a-major-coup-for-city-says-mayor

While in town, these shows would be worthwhile, given my interest in art about war,

http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/ae69883f-ebf3-45ed-8cc1-1d0cb88b6f7b.aspx

http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/ae1237c5-b209-4388-bc32-bb08e6d2b0bf.aspx my need to learn about aboriginal art, of which I know zero.

This show here is unfortunately over, but maybe I could get a catalogue and bring it home for my dance critic friend….. http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/7f8c8bd8-c097-4db5-bb9f-a5683d884925.aspx

and then I would walk the streets of Melbourne hoping to find graffiti that is local and compare it to American, German, French, Turkish and Italian street art respectively.

Some years back the Portland Art Museum presented an exhibit The Allure of the Automobile; I sort of cracked up when I heard them talk in the clip below about how the museum was not geared for a sculpture exhibition like this. http://www.oregonlive.com/art/index.ssf/2011/06/allure_of_the_autombile.html

People flocked to see it.

Cars as art is one thing, cars in art another. They have, of course, played a role in art, like anything else that lends itself to iconography. Where the impressionists were passionate about trains, stations and ships, the car became of interest to those who soon followed. Futurists were fascinated by tempo

(Luigi Russolo, Dynamismus eines Automobils, 1911)

and artists of the school of Neue Sachlichkeit were attracted to the beauty in functional objects.  (Tamara de Lempicka, Selbstporträt im Auto, 1928)

Surrealists like Renee Magritte took it to another level. (The Wrath of the Gods, 1960)

More modern artists chose a different perspective, (and different sponsors, as one can see in the relationship between BMW and Rauschenberg. BMW SHOW CAR)

Warhol goes for the effect, as always, (Green Disaster, 1963)

and the German Martin Kippenberger (Capri bei Nacht, 1981) often talked about the destruction of our environment by automobiles.

And then there is street art:

These are of course just a small sample of what is out there, but I thought it was representative in the sense of how much terrain is covered.

The ultimate catalogue about cars and art can be found here: https://www.amazon.de/Das-Automobil-Kunst-1886-1986/dp/379130772X in connection with a centennial exhibition in Munich in 1986. Unfortunately all in German, but the 263 plates or so are perhaps of interest to car art lovers.

Up the street is a small public park where people walk their dogs and play with their kids in a forest of redwoods. To everyone’s delight there appeared a little hobbit door on one of the trees some time back, soon surrounded by toy trolls brought by secret Santas. Then there were two, a row of little windows higher up on another tree. We could all just see the little kids joyfully finding the surprise. Now these carefully constructed and lovingly painted doors are sprouting throughout the park, as of last count seven or eight, and I, for one, am starting to get annoyed because I feel like I’ve landed in some miniature golf course or theme park instead of nature.

We know, of course, that people have a tendency to beautify and structure their environments. Yarn bombers are a case in point. They knit and crochet their merry ways across the landscape – sometimes creating beautiful work that really brightens the sidewalks, sometimes annoying public artists because their metal sculptures regularly end up with scarves…. (the oldest of the street knitters being 104 years old.http://www.boredpanda.com/grandmother-yarn-bomb-uk-souter-stormers-knitting-104-year-old-grace-brett/.) Sometimes the police takes down work that took months to complete for traffic safety and eventually, where do you find these creations? In art museums! Here was one interesting project at the Tate http://knitthecity.com/2012/10/09/half-sick-of-stitching/ .

I wonder when the line is crossed from novelty to nuisance, from craft to art.

The photographs of Orly Genger’s work Red, Yellow and Blue were taken in Madison Square Park, NY in 2013. She weaves and paints and constructs these sculptures to fit particularly environments. Their beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Which cannot be said for the following scenario, just now happening in Berlin Tegel. The wall painting, showing a blood covered girl and an impaled man, is upsetting the neighbors including a daycare center for young children who look at it from their playground. They are trying to have it removed, but by what legal means given private ownership? I guess, I should be grateful for little hobbit doors after all.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/berlin-tegel-duestere-fassadenkunst-schockiert-anwohner-a-1099024.html