#41 Rogue Art & Fine Wine in Switzerland
As international travel has opened up, we wanted to make up for some lost time. Our next trip was to Switzerland. We arrived early after the nonstop flight from Newark to Geneva. After a short drive through the morning rush hour traffic, we arrived in Lausanne, on the north shore of Lake Geneva.
We could not get into our Lausanne hotel room till 1200 or so s we took a walk through the old town area. We quickly came upon a charming town square where the people were gathered around a mechanical clock chiming and entertaining the hour of 10 am. Welcome to Switzerland!
After a nap and showers, we took off on foot up the steep hills of the city of Lausanne. Our destination was a quirky place that caught our eye as we read about the town online: Collection de l'Art Brut. If you find yourself with some time to kill in Lausanne, I highly recommend this delightful place.
Entrance of the Collection de l’Art Brut photo by Joan Naidorf
The museum is home to the art work of marginalized and unusual people who were not formerly trained or educated in the fine arts. They are a collection of orphans and misfits of all unimagined origins and backgrounds. One man started carving his wooden cell while imprisoned. Another lady wrote lengthy complex letters composed of dense calligraphy and decorative art as she tried to plead her way out of the insane asylum. Many of the artists were committed to insane asylums.
The stories and the media compose a fantastic collection of both permanent and temporary exhibitions. The intricate pen and paper self-portraits of Karl Beaudelere are featured this season in their own well-lit room. The haunting look of the artist stares back through the mass of random looking inked lines. I’ve never seen anything like it. Pictured below are a wall of the ceramics of Stanislaw Zagajewski. He was abandoned by his mother at the age of two in front of a church in Warsaw, Poland, and then placed in various orphanages. Later, he learned the trade of mason, before being employed in the restoration of stuccoes, in the old town of Warsaw. He turned to sculpting to express himself.
The delightful sculptures and ceramics carved by quirky by these men and women might have been lost or destroyed without the vision of the French painter Jean Dubuffet. We are so fortunate that the genius of others was recognized and collected.
A shell sculpture
Jean Dubuffet conceived and defined the notion of Art Brut in 1945 and constituted the first collection of works designated under this name. In 1971 he donated his collection to the city off Lausanne. Its Collection de l'Art Brut has been placed in a beautiful Château de Beaulieu and now consists of over 60,000 pieces. (don’t worry, only a few hundred are on display!)
Every grouping of art is accompanied by a short bio and picture of the artist. The website for the museum also has the biographies and pictures of the works. Every media, fabric and even calligraphy is represented throughout the museum. The sad lives of many of the artists are played out through the documentation of their artwork. One artist who made an intricate mosaic sculpture garden that was only discovered after his death.
Wood Carvings by Eugenio Santoro
photo by Joan Naidorf
The typical biography of a confined psychiatric patient could genuinely have been that of Vincent Van Gogh. Had his brother Theo not been an art dealer, his oeuvre might have been overlooked or lost entirely. How many geniuses have we missed or lost?
For an admission fee of 12 Swiss Francs, the walk up hill or short cab ride from the downtown market area is well worth the effort. We found a tasty pub dinner in the downtown area of Lausanne and went to sleep as late as we could manage.
The wine Terraces of Lavaux, Switzerland
Photo by Joan Naidorf
After breakfast, we were picked up by a lovely French sommelier for a private wine tour that my husband booked of the LaVaux region located on the shores of Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Montreaux. The wine terraces are designated as a Unesco World Heritage site and can be reached easily by car. They were originally cultivated and enclosed in stone walls by monks over a thousand years ago.
Marker for Villette in the Vineyard
Photo by Joan Naidorf
The steep terraced vineyards benefit from three-fold warmth from solar, thermal and radiation sources: Directly from the sun, mirrored reflections from Lake Geneva and that of heat stored in the many stone walls along the terraces. They refer to these influences as their three suns.
Our first tasting was literally “self serve” in a field in the village of Villette. The most popular white wine grape variety is Chasselas which we tasted in several forms at our next stop. We dodged a passing storm in the deserted tasting room. We were served four wines and a lovely tray of nibbles.
After a short walk around the village of St. Saphorin, we visited the Domaine Bovy (Home | Domaine Bovy ) The barrel room featured beautiful paintings on the huge wine casks. Furnished with large oak barrels (barrels with a capacity of 2,500 to 5,000 liters), several of which are more than a hundred years old. Some casks are adorned with paintings and sculptures signed by the original vintner and more recent artists.
Cask Painting at Domaine Bovy
photo by Joan Naidorf
The wine tasting was offered by the winemaker in a lovely tasting room and the outdoor garden seats offered stunning views of the terraces and the lake. Clearly, the Swiss people know a very good thing when they taste it and very little of their wine production is exported out of the country. I strongly advise visiting the beautiful Lavaux region when you visit Switzerland and making the effort to try the many Swiss wines that are on the local menus.
