Malmö: Moderna Museet and the Turning Torso

When I wrote the portion of the title of this entry after the colon, “Moderna Museet and the Turning Torso,” and upon reading it back to myself in my head, I thought, “That would make a fabulous, and hopefully novel, novel title.”

It bothered me that my mind couldn’t express it to myself in a way that avoided the “novel, novel” redundancy. Nevertheless, I concurred with myself. It would make a great novel title.

No! Scratch that! It wouldn’t just make a terrific novel title. It would make an awesome title for the first book of a whole series.

Moderna Museet and the Turning Torso. Moderna Museet and the Bended Knee. Moderna Museet and the Crooked Arm. Moderna Museet and the Upturned Nose. Moderna Museet and the Rolled Eye. Moderna Museet and the Upset Stomach. Moderna Museet and the Loosened Bowels. …

Okay. Maybe forget about that last one. But you get the picture.

I don’t have any storylines in mind for any of the books. So, if the price its right, you might be able to convince me to sell you the rights to the titles. But, wait. There’s more. If you act right now and mention that you’re a reader of Joel’s Journeys and Jaunts, you’re entitled to a special discount.

But let’s get on with the journal entry, not yet in progress, shall we?

Oh. By the way. I leave Malmö tomorrow morning, so there’s a summary of my time here at the bottom of this post.

Malmö Moderna Museet

Malmö Moderna Museet is a small modern art gallery. I needed to prefix it with “Malmö,” not just to extend the alliteration, but also because there are other Moderna Museets in Sweden. I think it’s just the Swedish term for a gallery of modern art. I read somewhere that the one in Malmö is a branch of the one in Stockholm. So, there’s at least that one.

Before I describe the Malmö Moderna Museet, I want to provide a brief aside about a sign on the outside wall of the gallery. Because this is my journal, if I want to, I will.

Aside

On Being Nice

On the outside wall of the Moderna Museet facing the street it’s on, there’s a large sign with a quote from Andy Warhol. It says, “I think everybody should be nice to everybody.”

I take issue with Warhol on that. I’d be more reluctant to take issue with him if he were still alive and there was any chance I’d ever meet him, because I don’t want to debate it.

However, while I think you should always be nice to people as the default position for people you don’t know and people you do know and who are worthy of niceness, I don’t think you need to be nice to everyone. If, for example, Hitler were alive today, I think you would be justified in being the opposite of nice to him. The same with Neo-Nazis that do exist today. And, to take a hypothetical situation, anyone who’s a fascist or wannabe fascist and who manages to get elected as President of the United States doesn’t deserve niceness to be directed toward him. Not to mention any names. I’m only talking hypothetically.

(Having said the above, I probably can’t safely visit the United States for the next few years.)

Okay. That wasn’t too long an aside, was it? Back to the Moderna Museet.

As I said, it’s small. There are two exhibit spaces, neither of them huge.

The lowest level is one room with a high ceiling. I think it’s the equivalent of roughly three storeys tall.

I believe the museum mounts only temporary exhibitions. The current exhibition in this space is dedicated to one artist, Vivian Suter. It’s titled “I Am Godzilla.” None of her individual works on display is titled or dated. They are almost all very abstract, but there are vague hints in some of them of real-life objects like leaves.

The works are paintings on some kind of fabric. And they are everywhere in the space. The walls are practically filled with them, mounted in a seemingly disorganized fashion. Some also lie on the floor. Some hang from the ceiling. And some are suspended from dowels of wood that rest on a couple of metal frames.

In this last type of mounting, there are several paintings clumped together quite closely. Signs, including those immediately beside the racks, say not to touch the artwork. Because the paintings hanging from the racks are so close together, you can’t see much of the painting without widening the gap between them with your hands. But you aren’t allowed to widen the gap with your hands.

Um. Okay.

Upstairs is currently dedicated to an artist named Kiki Smith. This exhibition is titled “Woven Worlds.” Her work in the show is still abstracted, but less abstract than Vivian Suter’s work on the lower level. There are some drawings, but most are tapestries of jacquard weaving.

Most of the pieces are on loan, but the Malmö Moderna Museet owns one Kiki Smith piece that’s on display, possibly permanently. I’m not sure.

It’s mounted flat on the floor and consists of countless crystal glass models of (obviously) very much larger-than-life sperm. It’s titled “Sperm Piece / Spermieverk,” 1991.

Um. Okay.

The Turning Torso

There’s a piece of architecture that I’ve seen several times while in Malmö. It’s hard not to. At 54 stories, it’s the tallest building in the city, by a long shot. But it’s a half-hour or so walk away from the closest point to it in Malmö’s old town, where I’ve spent all of my time here. So I haven’t seen it up close until today when I took a walk over there.

As you’ve probably guessed, it’s named the Turning Torso. I’ve read in a few places that it got that name because the Spanish architect who designed it, Santiago Calatrava, designed it in the stylized shape of a torso turning. When I took the canal tour the other day, the captain talked about the Turning Torso with pride. He was a bit more specific, but I don’t know if he was more accurate. He said that Calatrava wasn’t inspired by just a turning torso, but specifically his wife’s turning torso.

It is an impressive twisting structure. I’ve read both that it is a strictly residential building and that it’s a mixed-use office/residential building. I don’t know which. I saw only one entrance, and it didn’t look welcoming.

When I looked at the map to go to the Turning Torso, I saw that there is a strip of green beside it on the map, and that strip of green led to a blob of green beside the body of water between Sweden and Denmark—the Øresund in Danish, Öresund in Swedish, and The Sound in English.

I walked along the green strip to the green blob. By the water, I could see the long bridge between Sweden and Denmark, and I’m pretty sure I could make out Copenhagen on the other side of The Sound.

I posted some pictures, but you can barely make out the bridge. For what I think was Copenhagen, I used the greatest zoom my phone would let me use, well past its optical zoom. So the resolution is poor, and the shot of, perhaps, Copenhagen is worse.

I walked along the shore for a while, battling some blustery winds and took another route back to my hotel to call it a day. And I said my farewell to Malmö before I leave tomorrow.

Malmö Summary

Long story short, I very much liked Malmö. The old town is extremely charming, with some great architecture. And there are some beautiful parks, big and small, lively town squares, and pleasant pedestrianized shopping streets.

I didn’t get out of the old town much while in Malmö. When I did, the buildings and streetscapes were less charming and less inspiring, but still, for the most part, not ugly.

A bonus was being able to easily do a day trip to Lund from a base in Malmö. Lund is amazing.

In these summaries, I’ve taken to assessing whether I spent the right amount of time in the city or town I’m in. I saw most, but not all, of the guidebook-recommended sights, but a little more time to walk around and do some more unguided exploring would have been great.

Going back for another day trip to Lund would have been enjoyable, too. It’s so close that you can do multiple day trips without having to move hotels. And the train to Lund doesn’t take much longer than walking across the full width of the old town of Malmö.

Plus, other cities and towns around Malmö looked interesting in my guidebooks. I didn’t investigate them, but I think you can get to one or two of those easily without a car. So that would have been an option for other day trips.

And then there’s the ultimate day trip. Copenhagen is a relatively short train ride from Malmö. As I’ve explained elsewhere here, I didn’t do that because I’m considering a possible future trip to Denmark, like this one in Sweden, where I will do a circle in Denmark that includes Copenhagen. We’ll see.

What I’m trying to say is that I probably could have spent at least another day or two here without getting bored.