Having a Rhine time, in Basel (Image by HWL)
Start the day with a breakfast of bircher muslie, a generous cup of coffee and perhaps a perusal of the cheese platter. (That freshly baked bread is hard to resist.)
From here get into the swing of things with a gentle stroll by the Rhine. Look out for the small wooden boat which glides across the river with the help of a piece of overhead wire and the natural current. (The swans do the same, minus the wire and the eccentrically dressed boatman.) In summer the Rhine is lined with folk swimming, relaxing and throwing themselves into the water – join in!
The Jean Tinguely Museum designed by architect Mario Botta is simply brilliant. The Swiss artist’s kinetic sculptures are terrific – by turns witty, fantastical, mad and frightening. If it’s playing, make sure you catch the film about his self-destructing sculpture Homage to New York installed at MOMA in 1960 (review here). During his lifetime Tinguely exhibited alongside surrealists such as Duchamp and sculptor Calder, Tinguely himself seems to have captured the wry humour of the surrealists, adapted the elegant mechanics of Calder and then amped the whole thing up like the proverbial mad scientist. This vintage newsreel hints at a the playfulness of some early works.
a childhood memory crossed with an alarm clock: kinetic sculptures @ the Jean Tinguely Museum (image by HWL)
interior, Jean Tinguely Museum, Basel (Image by HWL)
