After I wrote my last annual review of books read in 2018, it occurred to me that it would be helpful (to me) if I also recorded other things I’ve seen or heard. So, I have also started jotting down exhibitions, plays and other events we attend.

These notes are probably even less useful to any one not me than those about books, but at least some exhibitions can still be seen at the time of writing (permanent collections and around the last fifth of the list).

Exhibitions

I believe we visit on average about ten exhibitions each year. Various circumstances contributed to us seeing almost thirty this year, which will not happen again any time soon. We were lucky and most exhibitions we saw were at least interesting, many good and a few really amazing or even once-in-a-lifetime events.

Exhibitions:

• Claude Monet (Albertina, Vienna). An excellent exhibition which happily did not focus only on Japanese bridge and water lilies. Probably most painting by Monet you could possibly see at one place outside of Marmottan Monet in Paris.
• Helen Levitt (Albertina, Vienna). An interesting exhibition of one of the pioneers of street photography. What I found especially intriguing were strips of negatives that allowed visitors to compare selected and unselected pictures and how those presented were sometimes cropped. I probably am not the only person who would make a few different choices.
• Niko Pirosmani (Albertina, Vienna). A small exhibition of to me unknown Georgian naïve painter who was an important influence on Chagall and Picasso (among others). While I was not enamoured with all presented painting, others made strong impression on me and I would love to see his paintings again.
• Into the Great Outdoors (Leopold Museum, Vienna). An exhibition of mostly late 19th century Austrian outdoor painters and paintings. Apart from few exceptions it mostly left me cold and unimpressed.
• Klimt-Moser-Gerstl (Leopold Museum, Vienna). I was not familiar with Gerstl who I think would do interesting work if he lived longer. I was also pleasantly surprised by Moser and Klimt part of the exhibition. Unfamiliar works and a new perspective gave me a new appreciation for both artists.
• Bruegel (Kunst Historisches Museum, Vienna). A truly once in a lifetime experience. Seeing 4 out of 5 surviving months of the year paintings next to each other as well as both Towers of Babel were two highlights of a really exceptional presentation of the Flemish master. We could be there for hours more, but with just end of a day tickets available could stay only until we were thrown out.
• Milton Glaser, Posters (MGLC, Ljubljana). A small exhibition of 35 posters made by Milton Glaser. Wished exhibition was bigger.
• Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition (Somerset House, London). Any awards exhibition will show choices one disagrees with, especially when there are 800. It helps to skip reading often inane descriptions next to them. Still, I overall enjoyed the exhibition and more than I suspect I would the Deutsche Börse one.
• Diane Arbus: In The Beginning (Hayward Gallery, London). I am not an admirer of most of her work, but this exhibition really helped me understand her historical importance as so much of modern photography I dislike (and sometimes like) was clearly directly influenced by her work. I feel I'd like it more if my experience wasn't already tainted by her less talented and interesting successors.
• Don McCullin (Tate Britain, London). Having seen so many of his pictures I was still not prepared for this punch in a stomach. Moving, devastating and always humane and needs to be seen even when most uncomfortable. I kept wondering how he managed to survive decades of his work and the answer is he kind of hasn't completely. Echoes of human suffering are still present even in his recent photos of Somerset landscape.
• The Renaissance Nude (Royal Academy of Arts, London). Wish it was a longer exhibition of development of the nude in 15th and 16th century art.
• Pierre Bonnard (Tate Modern, London). Some people question if Bonnard was any good. Those people are idiots. His compositions alone, especially those involving people, were innovative, interesting and usually well executed. I care less about his landscapes which are just fine.
• Dorothea Tanning (Tate Modern, London). Ashamed to say I did not know her before as her works in this exhibition blew me away. A feast for the eyes. I find surrealistic art difficult to interpret, but would love to know more about her personal family experiences.
• Edvard Munch (British Museum, London). An exhibition worth seeing on Munch's development as a printmaker with more than 80 prints from Munch and artists that influenced him.
• Jóhannes S. Kjarval: Can't Draw a Harebell (Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik). Exhibition of "floral" work of one the most important Icelandic painters. Fine, but not the kind of work I enjoy greatly.
• Treasures of a nation (The National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik). An eclectic, often changed, mix of works from various Icelandic artists and the kind of exhibition where everyone can find pieces to enjoy. I certainly did.
• Hulda Hákon: Who are you people? (The National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik). A retrospective of to me unknown artist. I am still undecided on artistic merits of her works, but they are certainly engaging and fun.
• Permanent collection (Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti , Verona). Some very nice pieces in a collection of mostly 19th and early 20th century art that was shortened by an underwhelming photo exhibition.
• Permanent collection (Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona). Again, a few very interesting pieces in a collection that requires affinity for sacred art. Worth seeing for the castle and architectural upgrades alone.
• Gauguin Portraits (The National Gallery, London). While knowing a bit about Gauguin's life beforehand I still did not expect that the main take from this exhibition will be what an absolute swine he was. But not talentless which I think is especially obvious in his later works done outside of France. No shortage of good paintings and some great ones, but the ticket price was still exorbitant.
• The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2019 (National Portrait Gallery, London). I thought there were a few very good photo portraits, but overall I found the exhibition disappointing. Most exhibits covered the same few trendy issues in a fairly formulaic way.
• Leonardo da Vinci (Louvre, Paris). An amazing collection of works that could be presented better (e.g. IR reproductions next to the actual pictures with more guidance). I also missed more contextual information, but it was another must-see once in a lifetime exhibition. Event Vitruvian man showed up with its very own security guard.
• Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life (Tate Modern, London). I was passingly familiar with him before, but now I might have found my favourite contemporary visual artist. A fantastic exhibition of few decades of work clearly inspired by Iceland that was sad, fun, full of wonder and never dull.
• William Blake (Tate Britain, London). I still admire a lot of his works, but this comprehensive look into his whole life and work has also shown Blake could be lazy and mediocre when not interested in work he was hired to do. I wish curators of such exhibitions dared to be more critical, but enormous amount of works, many rarely accessible (such as one of only two existing copies of coloured Jerusalem) presented well, make it a must visit one.
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year (Natural History Museum, London). A now annual visit to enjoy recent works and find amusement in often questionable background descriptions. Astonishing how much better wildlife photos got in just the last decade. I never fully agree with judges’ decisions, but there were few if any real misses this year and I'm glad we saw it. Still find it odd that exhibition merchandise is also made out of photos that didn't even qualify for the exhibition.
• Anselm Kiefer Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot (White Cube, London). 80% of modern art is garbage, but Kiefer's certainly isn't. Kiefer is not a happy optimist and exhibited works can be almost literally (physically) overwhelming. They are views into sins past and present, but visually compelling, even beautiful and I could not look away. I liked superstrings series the least, but still a lot.
• Albrecht Dürer (Albertina, Vienna). I was familiar with Dürer's print work and knew Albertina has an amazing collection, but this exhibition was nevertheless a revelation of his talent and skill. He could do pretty much anything and his watercolour paintings are breathtaking. As usual team at Albetina excels at contextualising and explaining his work (unlike say Louvre) and hours just flew by.

Theatre

Plays are something I only see in London because we visit it most often. I am rarely really disappointed even though or maybe because UK theatre seems less experimental than our own. Wish I wasn’t so (unreasonably?) annoyed by Slovenian acting.

In any case, performances we saw this year:

• Betrayal by Harold Pinter (Harold Pinter Theatre, London). A play about infidelity and its disastrous consequences told in reverse chronological order. Wonderfully acted by all and especially Tom Hiddleston.
• Three sisters by Anton Chekhov (Almeida Theatre, London). Not as good as Summer and Smoke was by the same team and difficult to enjoy when you are repeatedly reminded of unpleasant recent events, but nevertheless a good show solidly acted.
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (The Piccadilly Theatre, London). A phenomenal production and performance by Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke and the rest of the cast with many in audience moved to tears. Felt privileged to see it.
• Translations by Brian Friel (National Theatre, London). Irish accent made this more difficult to follow and I would love to read the play, but it was unquestionably a moving and thought-provoking examination of language, communication and cultural imperialism. Splendidly performed by everyone.
• Noises Off by Michael Frayn (Garrick Theatre, London). I rarely enjoy farces, but this one was hilarious. I haven’t laughed so much in a while. Cleverly structured in 3 parts, each building on previous, is funny almost without a pause and performed without a fault and exceptional timing by a great cast.

Other

We rarely go to concerts anymore as they are simply too loud and crowded for me to enjoy, but we happened to stumble upon Bach’s St. John Passion performed at St. Martin in the Fields church while we were in London for Easter, which promised to be neither. I always had difficulty understanding sung words in any language, but especially German. Nevertheless, the performance was beautiful and while I wasn't too keen on Stephen Anthony Brown's evangelist take, it was certainly done well.

Early this year I was reading a couple of books about Typescript and got really annoyed by basic technical errors and poorly conceived books structures. Python is a strongly typed programming language and if the intended reader is expected to already have mastered Typescript’s basics, then they probably don’t need a chapter on how to install it. I wanted to vent about decline in quality of technical books in recent years, but I am glad now that I didn’t get around writing about it.

This summer I decided to use some of my downtime during treks to update and improve my knowledge of functional programming by reading 3 books on this topic and I could hear my inner voice screaming, again: “Who is this book for?” Too much effort was spent on technical minutiae and none whatsoever on how to actually design and develop programs of non-trivial length, which in my experience is one of the main stumbling blocks for inexperienced developers.

None of these books was new with the oldest coming out in 2012. All three were published by O’Reilly which at least back then was considered a respected source of technical content. So, quality erosion started sooner than I noticed, but still seems to be getting worse with publishers cutting corners everywhere while trying to compete with self-published authors whose books often seem overstuffed with marginally useful information to fatten them to book length, probably to raise their perceived value so they can become a source of passive income and/or improving author’s resume.

Of course some books, self-published or not, are good, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find them between so many bad ones. Especially since number of online reviewers have not scaled nearly as much and hence most books have few if any reviews.

This is a problem for people like me, who like to learn about a new topic through books, but I think the effects may be larger. Books can be a good way to coalesce and distill knowledge to a package that could serve as a good introduction to topic’s novices. Modern web development has become a complicated affair with surprising and often depressingly short turnaround of technologies used and while it is useful to have someone explain in detail a tool that will likely be largely abandoned in two years time, I find there are not enough of them aiming for longer shelf life by teaching foundational knowledge.

This spring I threw out more than a meter of old, mostly computer-related books that were now completely obsolete and I could certainly do the same with most electronic books that I have, if I could be bothered. While I was doing this, weighing on each book if it still has something valuable to say, a question kept coming up. If I was starting my career today, as many are, how would I even go about it?

We like to travel, but I avoid reading travel pieces unless we are researching for an upcoming trip as we currently are. Too much of this semi-fictional genre is snobbishly prescriptive or laughably overconfident (and sometimes both).

The most annoying example of former is almost a sub-genre of writing describing the right way to travel while scolding “detractors” where right usually means backpacking for months with a small backpack and on cheap trying to meet locals. I find it especially annoying because not only do we not all travel for the same reasons, for most of us how we travel is a compromise between our wishes and abilities including available time and money. What every traveller should strive for is to minimise their negative impact on environment and visited cultures and apart from cruises there are few travel approaches that I would describe as a priori wrong.

The other grating notion is the idea that spending a few months in a foreign society will result in your understanding of it. This is not true even if you are an anthropologist. More exposure rarely hurts, but I wish more people stayed humble in their interpretations of observed events. I understand English pretty well, have spent cumulatively almost two years in England, have friends there and have spent decades consuming British culture through media, books, TV, movies and music. An investment I am unlikely to be able to repeat with any culture and yet I am still not completely fluent in it. There are bits I don’t understand and frankly not all British do either as is likewise true for me and Slovenian culture.

However, I find an interesting advice or insight can salvage almost anything. With this hope, here’s mine. Try watching local TV at least a bit during your travels, especially commercials. I find advertisement provides a skewed, but interesting lens on how society wants to see itself and what it finds important and profitable. Also, asking for opinions instead of facts is more likely to elicit richer answers and repeating previously answered questions to newly met people can be illuminating.

(Photo) gear

Like I said, I read articles about travel rarely except when doing research, which mostly is looking for information about specific locations and travel gear.

Over the years we’ve developed check lists for all types of trips we do and got pretty good at packing, but the need to tweak our gear never goes away if for no other reason to replace worn out stuff.

Few items I am almost obsessed about. Backpacks are one of them. Their designs have immensely improved over the years and I have also accepted that we need several, but I think philosophical differences between me, and backpack designers make it unlikely I will find a perfect one for multi-day treks.

Trekking trousers are another. Men trousers are usually serviceable, but women’s are generally awful because of creators seemingly almost phobic fear of external pockets. If one needs to wear a jacket or take off their backpack to have access to a map or one’s phone, then they are not fit for use and most aren’t.

But since we are both keen photographers, I especially try to optimise photo equipment we lug around. Last decade brought a lot of changes to gear I see used on our trips. Most casual shooters have switched to using smartphones and mirrorless cameras are replacing DSLRs among photo enthusiasts although later group may carry as much as it used to since new space and weight are now often taken by drones. Everyone uses whatever device makes desired shot the easiest (e.g. wide panoramas tend to be taken with smartphones).

Our trips usually include up to a weeklong off grid treks. It took me way too long to figure out that the best way to handle those is carry a high-capacity power bank and making sure every electrical device can be powered through USB connection. This makes everything easier also when we are back as it reduces number of cables, is generally easier to fix if something goes wrong and reduces the need to find free electrical sockets. We don’t use solar cells because they would rarely if ever be practical to us.

On our last trip I tried to see how well I can do with smartphone as my only camera. Generally, I was pleased with the results but found phone’s lack of zoom too limiting. Which is why I have switched to iPhone X with its 2x optical zoom. Still, while better than before this is often not enough and cannot be compensated with cropping because significant crop of a 12M image does not leave many pixels even when change of perspective is not an issue.

It seems new phones will add even wider lenses that are fairly useless to me as stitched panoramas are excellent and have better resolutions. I have experimented with switchable lenses from ShiftCam. I still love their design, but lenses themselves are of poor quality, a problem also plaguing their competitors based on published online images. Would gladly pay more for an easy to use quality zoom lens if I could find one.

On the other hand, apps available for tweaking photos are often phenomenal. As an iOS user I mostly rely on built-in tools, SKRWT for perspective corrections and TouchRetouch for removing unwanted items. It can feel almost magical how easy it can be to shape up a photo. I am sure equivalent tools exist also on Android platform.

Nevertheless, the technical quality of these photos is still noticeably worse than those taken by our Nikon so we will continue carrying all that stuff. If only I could now find a compact travel tripod that would be easier to attach to our backpacks.