I use various filters and a special plugin in Facebook to filter out advertisements and sponsored posts from my feed. For some reason an ad for The Art of the Brick, a LEGO® art exhibition by an American artist (and a former lawyer) Nathan Sawaya, got through. We didn’t think long and made instant plans for an extended weekend mini-vacation in Lyon. We also planned the week’s long run in the magnificent park of Tête d’Or in Lyon. The park has a variety of trails, with different types of surfaces, longest one around the outskirts of the park being about for kilometers. There are several water fountains and toilets. And of course a lot of runners. Lyon probably comes second in the number of runners we’ve seen in the morning hours, both by the river and in this park, after the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The sunshine or heat was not a problem this past weekend, but it wouldn’t be hard to fine shady trails in the park.
The Art of the Brick exhibition was on two floors in the gigantic Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon, a former hospital (until 2010) transformed into a high-end shopping and dining center, also hosting a hotel Intercontinental. The works on the first floor were LEGO® replicas of famous paintings and sculptures, consisting of from few hundred to 20000+ bricks, some of them custom colored to match the original work. Interestingly Sawaya had made 3-D versions of some 2-D paintings, like Whistler’s Mother and Munch’s Scream.
We almost missed the second floor, since there was no sign indicating that the exhibition continued upstairs. Works on the second floor were artist’s original pieces, portraits of some famous people (e.g., Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Andy Warhol), a replica of Parthenon, and T-Rex skeleton. The latter consisted of more than 80000 bricks. It was supported from the ceiling by wires; it was obvious there was no way it could have held itself up without them. On the first floor there was a replica of the statue Nike of Samothrace, which the artist claimed to be a true engineering challenge due to the weight of its wings. It didn’t use any external supports.
To finish a couple of pictures: one from Confluence and the other two from the pedestrian underpass below Lyon Perrache railway station.
