1.
Bern
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The city of Bern or Berne is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to by the Swiss as their Bundesstadt, or federal city. With a population of 141,762, Bern is the fourth-most populous city in Switzerland, the Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000, Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerlands cantons. The official language in Bern is German, but the language is an Alemannic Swiss German dialect. In 1983, the old town in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bern is ranked among the top ten cities for the best quality of life. The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain and it has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German. As a result of the find of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin. The bear was the animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of bears in the Bärengraben dates to the 1440s. No archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic oppidum stood on the Engehalbinsel north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC, during the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman vicus was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name Brenodor, in the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in Bümpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some 4 km from the medieval city. The medieval city is a foundation of the Zähringer ruling family, according to 14th-century historiography, Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen. In 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made an imperial city by the Goldene Handfeste of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. In 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of the eight cantons of the period of 1353 to 1481. The city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare, the Zytglogge tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the Käfigturm took over this role until 1345. It was, in turn, succeeded by the Christoffelturm until 1622, during the time of the Thirty Years War, two new fortifications – the so-called big and small Schanze – were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula
2.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
3.
Paul Klee
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Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism and he and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all, the art of living, then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. His sister Mathilde was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen and their father came from Tann and studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory singing, piano, organ and violin, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they moved 17 years later after numerous changes of residence into a house at the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7 and he was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. He stated, I didnt find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement. As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, during his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his exams at the Gymnasium of Bern. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. On his own time, in addition to his interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature. With his parents reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and he excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint, during these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists models. He had a son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth
4.
Renzo Piano
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Renzo Piano, OMRI, OMCA is an Italian architect and engineer. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, and he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998. Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, into a family of builders and his grandfather had created a masonry enterprise, which had been expanded by his father, Carlo Piano, and his fathers three brothers, into the firm Fratelli Piano. The firm prospered after World War II, constructing houses and factories, when his father retired the enterprise was led by Renzos older brother, Ermanno, who studied engineering at the University of Genoa. Renzo studied architecture at the Milan Polytechnic University and he graduated in 1964 with a dissertation about modular coordination supervised by Giuseppe Ciribini and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. In 1970, he received his first international commission, for the Pavilion of Italian Industry for Expo 70 in Osaka and he collaborated with his brother Ermanno and the family firm, which manufactured the structure. It was lightweight and original composed of steel and reinforced polyester, the first project of the firm was the administrative building of B&B Italia, an Italian furniture company, in Novedrate, Como, Italy. This design featured suspended container and an open bearing structure, with the conduits for heating and these unusual features attracted considerable attention in the architectural world, and influenced the choice of the jurors who selected Piano and Rogers to design the Pompidou Center. The award came a surprise, to the world, since the two were little-known, and had no experience with museums or other major structures. The New York Times declared that their design turned the world upside down. The escalator, in a transparent tube, crossed the facade of the building at a diagonal, the building was an astonishing success, entirely transforming the character a run-down commercial section near the Marais in Paris, and made Piano one of the best-known architects in the world. The media dubbed the style of the building as high-tech, Beaubourg, he said, was a joyous urban machine, a creature which might have come out of a Jules Verne novel, a sort of bizarre boat in dry dock. It is a provocation, a challenge to academism. To consider it as an object is a mistake. In 1977 Piano ended his collaboration with Rogers and began a new collaboration with engineer Peter Rice and they established their offices in Genoa. One of their first projects was a plan for the rehabilitation of the old port of Otranto from a site into a commercial. Their first major building was the Menil Collection, in art museum for the art collector Dominique de Menil, the chief requirements of the owner for this building was to make the maximum use of natural light in the interiors. Piano wrote, Paradoxically, the Menil Collection, with its serenity, its calm, its discretion, is more modern, scientifically speaking
5.
Twittering Machine
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Twittering Machine is a 1922 watercolor and pen and ink oil transfer on paper by Swiss-German painter Paul Klee. Like other artworks by Klee, it blends biology and machinery and it has been seen as a visual representation of the mechanics of sound. Originally displayed in Germany, the image was declared degenerate art by Adolf Hitler in 1933 and sold by the Nazi Party to an art dealer in 1939, whence it made its way to New York. One of the better known of more than 9,000 works produced by Klee and it has inspired several musical compositions and, according to a 1987 magazine profile in New York Magazine, has been a popular piece to hang in childrens bedrooms. Each of the birds is open-beaked, with a jagged or rounded shape emerging from its mouth, the end of the perch dips into a crank. Sometimes, the image is perceived as quite dark, MoMA suggests that, while evocative of an abbreviated pastoral, the painting inspires an uneasy sensation of looming menace as the birds themselves appear closer to deformations of nature. They speculate that the machine may in fact be a music box that produces a fiendish cacophony as it lure victims to the pit over which the machine hovers. One birds tongue flies up out of its beak, an exclamation point punctuating its grim fate—to chirp under compulsion, according to Wheye and Kennedy, the painting is often interpreted as a contemptuous satire of laboratory science. Danto believes that perhaps this machine has been abandoned, the birds using it as a perch from which they issue the sounds the inert machine is failing to produce. Danto also suggests, conversely, that the painting may mean simply that it not be a bad thing if we bent our gifts to the artificial generation of bird songs. The Swiss-born Klee had been teaching at the Bauhaus school in Germany for a year when he completed this ink drawing on watercolor in 1922. The work was displayed for years in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin until Adolf Hitler declared it. The Nazis seized the painting and sold it in 1939 for $120 to an art dealer in Berlin, the New York MoMA purchased the painting that same year. Although Klee produced more than 9,000 works in his lifetime, according to Danto, the painting is one of the best-known treasures at the Museum of Modern Art. The son of a musicologist, Klee himself drew parallels between sound and art, and Twittering Machine has been influential on several composers. Larson wrote in New York Magazine that the image was then embedded in childhood prehistory, commenting that it seemed to be taped to kids bedroom walls. Encounters & Reflections, Art in the Historical Present, gardners Art Through the Ages, the Western Perspective. Klee Paintings Exhibited At Smith College, New Art City, Manhattan at Mid-Century
Media related to Zentrum Paul Klee at Wikimedia Commons