travel log day 7 - cologne cathedral, ludwig museum

26 Aug, 2025

a/n: to my great regret, i did really poorly at taking notes on this day - by this point i had accepted that i was going to be several days behind on writing these posts, so i did my best to record notes of what happened and my thoughts, but in this instance it escaped me.

what do i even write about the cologne cathedral? do i write about the scale of the place, immense in both space and time, the way it consumed the labour of several lifetimes and turned it into a work of art that defies any perception of its physical size? that would seem natural, but i think my partner has described it (and so much more) more eloquently than i currently could.

at some point, someone mentioned how it would be "easy to believe in God, with something like that". i have never been particularly religious, nor was i raised to be¹, but here - sitting in the pews and wondering how many people over the years had sat where i did - staring up at the stained glass windows that seemed to glow with inner light - watching as strangers gathered to pray and light candles in offering - i could feel the overwhelming strength of aligned human spirit in this place. i could feel a fraction of the weight of God, if not the presence, and it would easily mould me into a part of itself if it was a regular part of my life.

the cathedral holds, among other things, a shrine said to house the remains of the three wise men². this was, someone claimed, the reason the cathedral was built at all. i couldn't imagine being the architect that set upon building such a place for such a purpose; but then, i couldn't imagine being given such a [task/honour/burden] and doing anything less.

someone pointed at the windows, and mentioned "oh, they made the halos out of a lighter colour of glass, so they look like they glow". in hindsight, i wonder if that was actually all it was; i suspect those panels of glass may be textured differently, or have some other treatment to produce the effect. in the moment, i hadn't even thought about it; in that place, it just seemed natural that the halos would glow.

at some point, someone made a comment about how it would be to live here, and i replied "sorry, you probably need notre dame for that", and i remembered with a jolt that i have been to notre dame, in 2015. i wish i could remember what it was like. i wish i had gone when i was less massively depressed, and more able to appreciate it.

next door to the cathedral is the ludwig art museum. i tend to struggle with interpreting art from before my time, since i usually have very little understanding of the social and artistic context, but the thing about art is you get points for trying.

the museum holds a work by yves klein called Monochrome bleu: IKB 73, which is in fact well described by its title. in my short time on the internet i've seen the "how can you call this single colour square a work of art" posters, and i've seen them be met by others (let's be real, first year arts majors mostly) explaining that this question, and the implicit assumptions about the nature of art that it contains, are part of the statement the art is making.

monochrome bleu is of course such a work, but it has a quality to it that most internet posts completely fail to note, which is that it is Impossibly and Overwhelmingly Blue. its Blueness dominates the room; you cannot catch monochrome bleu in the corner of your eye, because the moment it becomes visible it radiates blue into your field of vision. in a sense i think this kind of weakens the interpretation that people claim - surely "this is art because i have declared it to be" is a more compelling claim when attached to something otherwise unassuming - but on the other hand, the work has a certain power behind it that makes up the gap by sheer force of will. i can imagine declaring that monochrome bleu is not art; i think i would have difficulty telling the work that to its face. i understand now how one can be afraid of red, yellow and blue.

further inside there was an exhibition by pauline hafsa m'barek about the conservation of photography, and the various forms of constant degradation that we fight against to preserve anything for the future. this was particularly interesting to me, but (to my, as established, poor art interpreter mind) it felt a little incomplete. a friend of mine³ studies art conservation, focusing mostly on books and similar works, and she talks sometimes about the intent of conservation, be it for pure preservation or for lasting display or for pristine accuracy to the original state.

physical artworks are degraded by light, by touch and sweat and skin oils, by changes in temperature and humidity, by exposure to reactive components in the air itself, but none of this is insurmountable; a steel case full of nitrogen or argon gas will preserve most things unchangingly for practically eternity, but that isn't the point, is it? this is what felt missing, in my heart - a recognition that the struggles of archival and conservation are the price of having the art available to be seen, not just an unavoidable blight. ultimately, the final wall making it so difficult and resource taxing to preserve many artworks perfectly for future generations is the choice that we make to preserve them for the people of today as well.

around the corner was a collection of street photography that i enjoyed greatly. the present works of Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander both tended towards unusual or dynamic perspectives; in both i saw elements of things i have tried to do in my own photography, though more masterfully rendered than i can yet manage. Joseph Rodriguez's photography was more conventional, stylistically at least, but i liked the focus on portraiture-as-documentation, an area of photography i haven't gotten much into personally but would like to in the future.

the museum had a lot of works by very famous artists - they had a collection of works by picasso, and while i am no great lover of picasso's art i have to respect it. for a moment i couldn't remember if i had ever actually been in a room with a work physically touched by such a famous artist, but then i remembered; some version of me has been to paris, some version of me has seen the mona lisa. and all of a sudden i found myself wishing for the second time that day that i had been a different person in 2015.

i stared into jackson pollock's Black and White No. 15 and tried to understand. i stared until shapes began to emerge. i stared until the layers reversed and the white stood out over the black. i stared until my soul twisted and shook. i turned away, checked my phone, saw a message from my partner asking to put food items on my body. my twisted soul cracked a little. i don't think i understood, but i was changed.

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