Now today I thought I would do the classical museums, starting with one I hadn’t even heard of before – the Museum fur Abgusse Klassischer Bildwerke. Its a plaster cast museum basically, with copies of various classical statues. And it was free. And brilliant, as I was the only one there, apart from the cleaning ladies. It really is a chance to see all the most famous classical statues all in one place. Looks stunning. And you can see just how many copies were done of the same subject. There is for example. A whole row of Flaying of Marsyas statues. And of course countless impossibly perfect youths displaying their fine physiques for posterity. I have always wondered whether in fact they represented just a bit better than the average Greek youth of the time, honed by the gymnastic training they had, or were they the one off ideal, and so no more representative of typical youths than say Tom Daley would be of your average English schoolboy. Whatever, its difficult to see that sculpture has truly advanced when one compares the dreadful attempts at filling the fourth plinth in Leicester Square to these masterpieces.
However, the rest of my day took setback due to poor reconnaissance. Most of the Munich museums close on a Monday. The one exception in the vicinity was the Neue Pinakotech (ie the 19th century picture gallery), which is a very attractively set out gallery with a lot of very interesting pictures and well worth a visit, and not just because it was open and in the area and it was raining.
And then Monday night of course means football, so back down to the pub again for Man U v Newcastle. And bottles of Newcastle Brown. Nothing like living as the locals do.
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