Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

The Ny Carlsberg Glytotek is a museum in Copenhagen that has significant Ancient Greek & Roman art as well as French and Danish paintings and sculpture. I was there to see the former and I much appreciated the fact that the entrance fee is waived on Sundays.

Etruscan temples were made of earthen materials, which over time have decomposed. Here we see the some remnants of a surviving Etruscan temple.

Doric, Ionic or Corinthian? Ionic because of the curly scrolls, called volutes.

The founder of Carlsberg Beer, Carl Jacobsen had a love of things French, Danish and Ancient. He donated his colletion to form this museum and this room is a celebration of the ancient world.

Palm trees in Denmark? The museum's two buildings are connected by a beautiful winter garden atrium.

Archaic (c. 560 BCE)...

....hellenistic (c. 330 BCE)

When the Romans overtook the Greeks, the victors took the original bronzes as war booty. They melted down the bronzes but luckily, due to their love of Greek sculpture, we have marble copies today. This is the of Polykleitos' "Discus Bearer." Polykleitos is known as the first Greek sculptor to shift the weight of his subject. This pose is called "controposto" with one leg forward and the opposite arm behind.

Here is a copy of Lysippos' "Hermes". Lysippos not only changed the canon of the head being 1/7 to 1/8 of the body, but he also began having the viewer look at the figure from multiple angles.

This is the guy I came to see, Demosthenes! In the Hellenistic age, no we begin to see portraits of regular people, or more specifically, body types that were not ideal ones. Demosthenes here is an old man, showing his age. The artist, Polyeuktos, doesn't idealize him, but shows him as he was, frail, with receding hair and an expression of sadness.

The room in which Demosthenes is housed was showing some crazy exhibition on Danish chairs and there were spotlights circling about flashing comments. I think this is an interesting statement on Hellenistic portraiture.

Augustus

The beard of a Roman man.

Roman women weren't excluded from portraiture. Notice the locket of hair that drops from off her perfectly kept hair.

The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent during the rule of Hadrian (117-138 AD). In times of peace, mens hair became bigger and bigger.

Lucius Verus (161-169 AD)

Alexander Severus (222-235 AD). Crew cut......

This bust is by Carpeaux, an 19th century sculptor. It shows just how far along, and how good, artists of the ancient world were. As I learn more about the ancient world, the more I hold it in high esteem.

Round Tower of Copenhagen

The Trinitas Complex in the center of Copenhagen was built 17th century by Christian IV. It consists of a church and a tower attached.(Picture taken from Wikipedia)

The Round Tower




At the top of the round tower, there is a working observatory, which was used by the University of Copenhagen until the 1800's. Christian IV, as well as his contemporaries were fascinated by astronomy.

One fascinating characteristic of the tower is that it is built with a circular ramp, not stairs.

Part of the reason for the ramp is to be able to get sensitive equipment up without much damage.

Embedded in the iron work at the top, is C4, the mark left by Christian IV on all the items he erected. Political propaganda, baby.

The view from the top of the tower, documentation of my no sun weekend.

I attended Sunday services at Trinity Church. There was a great choral concert during the service.

Directly above the interior of the church is a library and meeting room.

This photo is taken directly above the the library room and where I sat for the service. All three are taken facing to the east.

HERESY!! A heliocentric view of the world.

The charming area of Nyhavn. Anne, Rory and I had a fantastic Danish Julkefrost dinner in one of the buildings.

Louisiana Museum of Art

Of course, I had to ask why a museum of modern art in Denmark is named Louisiana. The answer is of course because the original owner of the land had three wives all named....Louise. Seriously, how does that happen?

The Louisiana Museum of Art is two train stops south of Helsingor and sits on the same channel as Kronborg Slot. The buildings, are connected by glass corridors and link up to form a large circular shape. I didn't realize that one underground corridor brought me to a part of the museum that I had been to earlier. That surprise was in and of itself worth a visit to the museum. I'm usually pretty skeptical of modern art, but the exhibition they had during my visit was engaging. I laughed a number of times and that was matched by the instances where I just went, "well, damn!"

Here's one of the glass corridors that connects the buildings.

Looking across the from one end of the museum to the other. The channel that separates Denmark from Sweden is to the right.

Literally, this was the first piece of art I saw.

Open up and it's......a fully functioning bathroom. I got a feeling that I was going to enjoy my visit.

So an artist stripped a prototype hydrogen car built by BMW and stripped it of it's outer shell. Then he replaced the it with "ice" racing stripes. To see it, you have to go into a "refrigerator".

The steering wheel.

This artist turned 1,000 microphones and attached them as one large "cloud" or microphones, turning what usually amplifies one voice for many to become the speaker itself.

This artist took a number of people and subjected them to something that made them fearful. He then took the essence of their sweat and managed to turn that smell into a scratch and sniff wall. Seriously, people's fear sweat smells different from person to person, I had my nose to the wall.

Another exhibit was one of a Danish photographer who had spent time traveling throughout the United States (mostly in the south and midwest) taking photos of obese people, poverty, KKK members, blacks, all the underbelly of American life. The exhibit was PACKED with Danes. They were enthralled, obviously it was new to them. For me, yawn. I was more into the people watching.

The Louisiana Museum itself is known for its environmentally sensitive architecture. Another exhibit was about the future of green cities. Here we have the model of a completely planned city somewhere in the Middle East. I was too tired at this point to be "educated" so I glossed over this part of the museum.

This piece is made of self-necrosing material.

The museum did have its share of this kind of art which I usually am indifferent to, but because of my enjoyment of the rest of the museum, I could walk by and not curse it.

Kronborg Slot at Helsingor (aka Elsinore)

The magic of Facebook put me back in touch with a friend that I first met back in the summer of 1987 at a summer program the two of us attended in Seattle. Rory B. now lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with her Danish partner, Anne. Many thanks for their hospitality and their comfortable couch.

My first stop while in Denmark about 40 kilometers (I'm European now, so I'll go metric) north of Copenhagen in the town of Helsingor, was the Kronborg Slot, or more widely known as Elsinore, Hamlet's Castle. The castle is a great representative of a renaissance castle as it was built by King Fredrick II in 1585. Kronborg sits on a point that juts out into the channel that separates Denmark from Sweden and was important both militarily and economically.

A fire burned most of the castle in 1629, but it was rebuilt by Fredrick's son King Christian IV. From the late 1700's through the 1920's Kronborg Slot was a military installation, housing soldiers and used for administration. In the 1930's it was restored to its former state and is now used by the Danish royalty on special occasions as well as the annual reenactment of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

My hosts Anne and Rory

A view of Kronborg Slot (from Wikipedia)

The moat, I show this picture because it's documents the only time I saw sunshine in my three and a half days in Denmark.

The entrance into Kronborg Slot

The 4 km wide Oresund which separates Denmark from Sweden.

There is no bridge across the channel, so boats still ply the waters. The channel is active with both cargo ships traveling North/South and passenger ships East/West.

One tower of Kronborg Slot is a lighthouse.

Cannons were used to fire upon enemy ships, although today they are used for ceremonial reasons.

Kronborg Slot is built in a square with a large courtyard in the center.

The King would sit in this room and look out the window and watch for ships to pay respect to him by lowering their flags. If they didn't the paid a fine. In addition, for many years the King of Denmark would charge a tax to any ship coming into Danish waters. This was abolished once and for all in the mid-1800's.

A typical feast of up to 15 courses. Note no silverware.

Many tapestries hang throughout the castle. They had a practical purpose, as they helped retain heat in each room. But they also serve as propoganda as each King had his own tapestry created and upon which was written his achievements.

This is the great hall of Kronborg Slot.

Every trip has to have some comment about food. Throughout Denmark, there are sausage carts where you can purchase tasty franks. The best one I had was one that was wrapped in bacon!

Apple Dumplings and Glogg, a mulled wine with raisins.

Glogg is made and kept warm in huge copper vats.