How to navigate the Golden Art Triangle

The Golden Art Triangle is a term used to describe the three great Madrid museums. The sheer size of the big three world-class museums and the wealth of art they exhibit means it is wise to pick out works, genres and temporary exhibitions in advance to conserve energy and enhance enjoyment.
Museo del Prado : A visit to the Prado, one of the world’s oldest and best art galleries, used to be an austere affair. But not any more: Rafael Moneo’s 2007 extension welcomes visitors into an airy reception space, with smartly dressed and efficient staff.
The upbeat tone is maintained throughout. Visitors get plenty of navigation help (the Prado has more than 10,000 works in its collection) and its floor plan uses thumbnail images and room numbers to identify masterpieces such as Titian’s “Danae and the Shower of Gold”, Rubens’ “The Three Graces” and Raphael’s “The Cardinal”.
More detailed guides are available in the galleries – for €1, self-service machines will provide a colour booklet full of intelligent commentary on key works and artists.
The Prado’s audio guide has a red “additional information” button – which is how I learnt about Goya’s arresting portrait “The Duchess of Chinchón” being painted over two earlier inverted (male) portraits and how this layering and thinning of the paint had helped with the painting’s conservation.
Goya’s moving political masterpieces “The Second of May, 1808” and “The Third of May, 1808” were cleaned last year, and are now as fresh and new as when they were first painted. They hang in one of three rooms dedicated to the artist.
Even in its own literature, the Prado does not claim to be complete or balanced but it is an extraordinary national museum which, since its expansion, can host fine temporary exhibitions. It is now a place to revel in sheer beauty and excellence.
The excellent Prado guide is available in several languages from the website as well as in the bookshop. It is heavy to carry around, so it’s best savoured before or after the visit.http://www.museodelprado.es/
Centro de Arte Reina : SofíaNext stop is the the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The Spanish National Museum of Modern Art expanded into space designed by Jean Nouvel in 2005.
The museum’s jewel is Picasso’s response to the civil war, “Guernica” (1937), the power of which is heightened by the adjacent presentations of Robert Capa photographs and George Grosz lithographs depicting the confusion and despair felt during a complicated time in Spain’s history.
Good use of film is made throughout Reina Sofía, including the delightful 1895 Louis Lumière film Sortie d’Usine. Outstanding works by Juan Gris, Joaquín Sunyer and Joan Miró reveal the museum’s strength in Spanish artists.
Highlights from outside Spain include two intriguing rooms dedicated to the work of German artist Oskar Schlemmer from the 1920s.
As in the Prado, the new space aims to expand the museum’s collection, to present temporary exhibitions and to develop its education programme.
However, some exhibits feel stretched out and do not work as well as they might. A closed café and a dingy bookshop were other small blots.http://www.museoreinasofia.es/
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza : Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza’s collection is housed in the remodelled 19th-century Palacio de Villahermosa (the renovation also the work of Rafael Moneo).
Opened in 1992 and expanded in 2004, the gallery feels rather flashier than the other two – this impression was emphasised by the current exhibition Tears of Eros, a clumsy peep show that lumps together Gustav Courbet and Marc Quinn’s gold sculpture of Kate Moss.
The salmon pink walls of the permanent collection do not make a sympathetic background for some important works. The subtle “Houses of the River (the Old Town)” by Egon Schiele is drowned out, Edgar Degas’ “Race Horses in a Landscape” struggles too.
The collection of 19th-century American art is rightly admired, as are the medieval works from Italy and Germany, but overall it feels like a museum that needs a rethink.http://www.museothyssen.org/
Casa SorollaRound off an art tour of Madrid with an uplifting visit to Valencian artist Joaquín Sorolla’s squeaky-floored home and studio.
Sorolla (1863-1923), subject of a retrospective at the Prado earlier this year, is best known for the way he makes light the main subject of his paintings of beach scenes and gardens.
His home, with its Moorish garden, is light-filled, too. The rooms contain domestic furniture and cabinets crammed with curios. The notes on discreet boards around the museum are minimal but helpful, and volunteers are on hand to give guided tours if booked in advance.http://museosorolla.mcu.es/
Real Jardín Botánico : The Royal Botanical Gardens, designed by Juan de Villaneuva, the architect of the original neoclassical Prado building, are not to be missed, and are next to the museum.
Although the statuary here, and in the nearby gardens of Parque del Buen Retiro, is grand, the gardens themselves are modest. Groups of children sit on the floor listening to guides’ stories of barks and buds.http://www.rjb.csic.es/

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Bron/Source : FT

BBC and British Museum announce ' A History of the World '

The BBC and the British Museum have joined forces in an original and unprecedented public service partnership, focusing on world history. At its heart is a landmark series on BBC Radio 4, ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ which will broadcast from 18th January 2010.
This series is a narrative global history told through the British Museum’s unparalleled world collection. The series will tap in to the unique power of objects to tell stories and make connections across the globe. To produce the series the BBC and the British Museum have come together in an ambitious partnership to ensure the widest possible access and engagement across radio, television and online.
"A History of the World in 100 Objects" is written and narrated by the British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor and produced by BBC Radio 4. The 15-minute programs will be broadcast in the key timeslot of 9.45am from Monday to Friday (rpt at 7.45pm). Each program will focus on one object from the Museum’s extensive collection and will include additional voices from a range of contributors including Bob Geldof, Wole Soyinka, Grayson Perry, Madhur Jaffrey and Seamus Heaney – and many others.
Each week of programs will be tied to a particular theme, such as ‘after the ice age’ or ‘meeting the gods’. Objects have been selected to cover the broadest possible chronological and geographical period, and tell a history of the world from two million years ago to the present day. The 100 programs will be broadcast in three tranches throughout 2010.
Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, said, “This partnership between the BBC and the British Museum is the fulfillment of an Enlightenment dream. Parliament set up the British Museum to allow all ‘studious and curious persons’ both ‘native and foreign born’ to construct their own history of the world and to find their place in it. Thanks to the incomparable reach of the BBC – radio, television, World Service and web – as the series develops, everybody across the UK and across the world will be able to participate, using not just the things in museums, but their own objects as well, to tell their history of the world”.
Mark Damazer, Controller of Radio 4, said, “The partnership with the British Museum has brought to Radio 4 the most exciting history project in my five years as Radio 4 Controller. The idea of a "History of The World" told through objects is audacious and it has been endlessly stimulating to see two creative organisations - animated by public service - coming together to produce what I believe will be thrilling programmes - not only on Radio 4 , but now across the BBC.”
The Radio 4 series has become the starting point for an extraordinarily far-reaching project. Both the BBC and the British Museum were keen to broaden the concept of ‘A History of the World’ and seize the potential for a wider program of activity focusing on world history. The project will also seek to encourage listeners to explore not only the global collections of the British Museum but to engage and participate with museums across the country to discover the power of objects.
The project has expanded to include:
• A 13-part CBBC series entitled ‘Relic: Guardians of the Museum’ broadcasting from January 2010
• Large scale activity across the BBC Nations and English Regions, with 350 museum venues around the UK contributing.
• Omnibus editions broadcast on the BBC World Service
• Holding all of these elements together is an exciting and interactive digital proposition, live from January 2010.
• Audiences encouraged to offer objects they own to create a unique digital museum online.
The legacy of ‘A History of the World’ will be secured through the website and through the work across the Nations and English Regions.

Website : BBC Radio 4

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Bloomsbury Triangles

Ce garçon se nomme David Garnett; il sera écrivain, son livre le plus connu (mais pas le meilleur) est l’histoire de Pocahontas. Pour l’heure, il est le jeune amant du peintre Duncan Grant. Nous sommes en 1915, et ces deux jeunes hommes, objecteurs de conscience, doivent travailler dans les champs pour ne pas partir dans les tranchées. La peintre Vanessa Bell, un peu plus âgée qu’eux, quitte alors son mari l’historien d’art Clive Bell et leurs deux enfants (Julian, futur poète et Quentin, futur historien d’art) et s’installe avec les deux hommes à Charleston House, dans le Sussex; Vanessa est amoureuse de Duncan Grant, qui l’apprécie mais n’est pas du tout attiré par elle. Jalouse de David Garnett, elle le dépeint ici comme un jeune homme rougeaud, emprunté et n’appartenant pas tout à fait à leur cercle aristocratique (son portrait au même moment par son amant Duncan Grant, qui n’est pas dans l’exposition, est autrement plus musclé et séduisant). Finalement Vanessa Bell convainc Duncan Grant de lui faire un enfant, Angelica, qui nait le 25 décembre 1918 (et, témoin survivante d’un monde disparu, était présente au vernissage l’autre jour; lire sa chronique ‘Trompeuse Gentillesse’). David Garnett épousera Angelica Bell, la fille de son amant donc, quand celle-ci aura vingt-quatre ans et ils auront quatre filles. Vous suivez ? Ajoutons que Vanessa Bell est la soeur de Virginia Woolf, épouse de Leonard Woolf et amante de Vita Sackville-West, et que le groupe comprend aussi John Maynard Keynes (qui déclara que sans Blomsbury, il n’aurait pas eu la largeur de vue nécessaire pour concevoir ses théories économiques) et Roger Fry. Vous pouvez acheter un petit badge avec cet épigramme anonyme : “Bloomsbury, a Circle of friends who lived in Squares and loved in Triangles”.
En France, nous savons finalement peu de choses sur Bloomsbury, ce mouvement de grands bourgeois et d’aristocrates qui surent s’affranchir des contraintes victoriennes - tant morales qu’esthétiques - et créer dans une variété de domaines : arts plastiques et littérature, bien sûr, mais aussi musique, économie et arts appliqués (comme on le voit fort bien ici), et cette exposition à la Piscine à Roubaix (jusqu’au 28 février) comble ce manque, ayant bénéficié de prêts importants et rares de collections anglaises : excellent prétexte pour aller découvrir cet agréable musée, qui fut classé l’an dernier parmi les tout premiers en France en termes de qualité (et si vous y allez pour la clôture de l’exposition, le 26 février, vous serez surpris !).
L’exposition comprend trois parties : la dernière est consacrée aux arts décoratifs au sein de l’entreprise Omega Works (dont Duncan Grant dessina l‘enseigne ci-contre), tissus et céramiques d’artisanat d’art, thème qui est bien dans la ligne de la Piscine (et qui me rappelle le Musée d’Art et d’Industrie de mon enfance, où cohabitaient vélos, fusils, tissus, tableaux, sculptures et dessins, et même une ‘vraie’ mine de charbon); Omega Works fut une belle tentative un peu naïve de bâtir une passerelle entre arts nobles et arts appliqués, mais elle ne dura guère. Le centre de l’exposition est une reconstitution assez brute de Charleston House (maison aujourd’hui transformée en musée) et des décorations que les trois habitants et leurs visiteurs y réalisèrent, agrémentée de tableaux qui y furent peints. Toujours de Vanessa Bell, cette rare incursion dans le non-figuratif m’a séduit : grands aplats pour dire le ciel et le sable, visages cachés, et cette forme médiévale qui n’est en fait qu’une tente de plage (Plage de Strudland, 1912). Au verso de cette composition, invisible ici, un groupe d’hommes nus, par Duncan Grant : beau déséquilibre !
La plus grande partie de l’exposition retrace l’évolution des peintres du groupe, commençant avec l’influence que les artistes français du début du siècle, découverts par Roger Fry, eurent sur eux, en particulier grâce à deux expositions en 1910 et 1912 (on peut voir, entre autres, un très beau nu à contre-jour de Marquet). Ces ferments-là contribuèrent à cette éclosion de modernité chez les peintres anglais. Voici, toujours de Vanessa Bell (elle est de loin le meilleur peintre du groupe), un portrait de Virginia Woolf, sa soeur, en 1912, dans un grand fauteuil à oreillettes, omniprésent dans ces portraits : l’écrivain aurait aimé savoir peindre, la peintre aurait aimé savoir écrire. Le visage de Virginia Woolf, trente ans avant son suicide, est comme effacé, absent, perdu.

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Bron/Source : Le Monde

Big Hubble instruments now Smithsonian Artifacts

Two instruments that helped save the Hubble Space Telescope from failure in 1993 were recently returned to Earth and are going on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
The first phase of a new human spaceflight gallery opens Thursday at the museum on the National Mall. The new "Moving Beyond Earth" gallery leaves plenty of room to add new artifacts in the coming years as NASA retires the space shuttle program. After the current mission, only five missions remain.
The two large instruments on display from Hubble, each weighing more than 600 pounds, provided critical repairs to flaws in the telescope's eye that could have doomed the project. "They're a lot lighter in space than they are down here. You can handle them with one hand," said astronaut John Grunsfeld, who flew on three Hubble repair missions and made eight spacewalks. "That's the magic of being in free fall."
The Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR for short, was part of an emergency Hubble repair in 1993 after scientists discovered the telescope's primary mirror was flawed, making images blurry.
It was retrieved during a Hubble makeover in May and will be on long-term display at the museum.
The world's most visited museum is remaking its human spaceflight gallery with new interactive displays on the shuttle, space stations and future missions to the moon and beyond. NASA's persistence in fixing Hubble allowed the telescope to make history, said Dr. Edward Weiler, Hubble's longtime chief scientist and now an associate NASA administrator.
"For the first time in human history, it showed that super massive black holes a billion times larger than the mass of our sun weren't just 'Star Trek' fantasy but were scientific reality," he said. "You only get to do that once."
Combined with advancements from the second piece on display, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, the repairs "turned the Hubble into a great American comeback story," Weiler said. A more advanced James Webb Space Telescope that could shed more light on how the universe was formed is set to be launched in 2014 on a European rocket.
"If humans would like to know how it all began, how the universe started to get itself together," Weiler said, "we're going to have to do something far beyond Hubble." Scientists and curators said Hubble has touched many parts of society.
Weiler said it provided images of the universe for possibly every science and astronomy textbook around the world. After a major overhaul in May, Hubble could last another five to 10 years, NASA has said.
The nation could have given up on Hubble but instead worked hard to fix it, said museum director Gen. J.R. "Jack" Dailey.
"We have to be severely challenged before we start paying attention," he said. "That's part of the problem with the space program today. There's no urgency. There's no competitor out there that's pressing us to the point where we say ... 'We've got to get to Mars' — because who else is going to do it?"

Website : Hubblesite

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Gentse Museumnacht

Op donderdagavond 3 december 2009 rollen 9 Gentse musea uitzonderlijk de rode loper uit voor de derde editie van de Museumnacht.Het publiek kan er gratis binnenlopen om te genieten van de vaste collecties, de tijdelijke tentoonstellingen en tal van bijzondere activiteiten. De deelnemende musea zijn het S.M.A.K., De wereld van Kina, Kunsthal Sint-Pietersabdij, Het Huis van Alijn, het STAM, het Museum Dr. Guislain, het MIAT, het Museum voor Schone Kunsten (MSK) en het Design museum Gent.

Hun deuren blijven open van 18 tot 1 uur. De Museumnacht (After)Party start om 22 uur en vindt plaats in de nieuwe gebouwen van het KASK (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten) op de Bijloke site. Een aantal musea kijken over de grenzen heen en belichten een andere cultuur. Het MSK, het S.M.A.K. en Kunsthal Sint-Pietersabdij brengen China en het Midden-Oosten dichterbij. Het Design museum Gent toont Tsjechië in al zijn facetten en in De wereld van Kina krijg je het warm van de Afrikaanse ritmes.
In Het Huis van Alijn, het MIAT en het STAM staan respectievelijk geëngageerd filosoof Jaap Kruithof, etser, lithograaf en drukker Armand Heins en het geheugen als waardevol vermogen op het programma.
Kortom, de Gentse Museumnacht brengt voor ieder wat wils en is een must voor elke cultuurminnende nachtvlinder.

Website : Gentse Museumnacht

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Bron/Source : Stad Gent

MOMA announces a retrospective of Jacques Tati

The Museum of Modern Art presents a 10-film retrospective of the French screenwriter, director, and actor Jacques Tati (born Jacques Tatischeff, 1907-1982), in The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters from December 18, 2009, through January 2, 2010. Jacques Tati features newly struck 35mm prints of his six feature films, including beautiful restorations of M. Hulot’s 'Holiday' (1953), 'Mon Oncle' (1958), and 'Playtime' (1967); his long-dreamed-of colorized version of 'Jour de fête' (1949), the revelatory 'Traffic' (1971), and the little-seen 'Parade' (1974); as well as three short sketch comedies. Complementing these is Claude Autant-Lara’s rarely screened wartime fantasy 'Sylvie et le fantôme' (1945), in which Tati gives a charmingly spectral performance. The retrospective is organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art.
One of cinema’s greatest comedians, Tati was also one of its most radical modernists. As a director, his experiments with sound, color, and image, and with language, design, and technology, are a fundamental, if often overlooked, bridge between the innovations of Buster Keaton and Max Linder in the silent era, those of his contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, Marguerite Duras and Robert Bresson, and filmmakers today who owe much to his style and humor, from Roy Andersson to Wes Anderson, Otar Iosseliani to Elia Suleiman, Takeshi Kitano to Sylvain Chomet.
As many critics have observed, Tati the actor plays the straight man to an absurdly comical world. With his loping, springy gait, he plays a man, M. Hulot, who has no discernable ambitions, yet who always seems to be at the ready with his raincoat and his highwater trousers, his pipe and hat, and a fishing rod or umbrella in hand. And M. Hulot always seems to be alone in a crowd, whether at a seaside resort or in a steely modernist office building, stuck in a traffic jam or returning to his salad days of pantomime on the circus stage.
Tati’s mise-en-scène has been compared with that of a Breughel painting (Raoul Dufy is equally apt): through long-take, deep-focus, all-over tableaux, a Babel of languages, and the burbling eruptions of machines gone haywire, he creates an entire cosmos, a meticulously choreographed chaos in a Cartesian world, and a singularly new, transformative, and democratic way of experiencing the moving image. In this way, as in so many others, Tati celebrates the importance of being playful.

Website : Jacques Tati

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Le premier festival de films en relief

La technologie "3D" fait l'objet début décembre d'un double festival en Belgique

La première édition du "3D Stereo Media" proposera une "sélection des meilleurs films en relief", un genre "en pleine explosion de Hollywood à Bollywood", ont expliqué les organisateurs.Une quinzaine de films seront présentés du 30 novembre au 3 décembre dans trois complexes cinématographiques à Bruxelles, Liège et Anvers.
Six films de cette sélection seront en compétition.En parallèle, un "festival de la technologie 3D", surtout destiné auxprofessionnels, se tiendra au Palais des Congrès de Liège, du 1er au 3 décembre(programme sur http://www.3dmedia2009.com/).Dans le monde naissant du cinéma en relief, plusieurs écoles cohabitent. Le président du festival, Ben Stassen ("Fly me to the Moon"), est partisan d'une "immersion totale" dans l'image. "Hollywood se contente souvent d'ajouter une couche de profondeur derrièrel'écran et de multiplier les effets de +jaillissement+, spectaculaires mais qui commencent déjà à lasser", souligne le "gourou" belge de la 3D, en rappelant qu'une première vague de cinéma en relief avait fait long feu dans les années 50, faute surtout de bons scénarios.A cet égard, la sortie mondiale le 16 décembre d'Avatar, le projet "3D" de James Cameron (Titanic), devrait donner de premières indications sur l'avenir du cinéma en relief nouvelle génération.Mais la technologie 3D ne se limite pas aux salles obscures, loin de là. A terme, "tous les écrans" devraient l'adopter, du téléphone portable à l'ordinateur", estime même l'un des initiateurs du festival, Pierre Collin.Bien sûr, les défis sont légion, notamment pour les ingénieurs, qui doivent encore "mettre au point les logiciels capables d'assurer les retransmissions en direct", souligne l'universitaire liégeois Jacques Verly. Car l'avenir de la 3D passe peut-être par la télévision. "Regarder un match de foot ou de basket en relief, c'est vraiment bluffant",assure Alain Gallez, autre cheville ouvrière du festival.

Website : 3D Media 2009

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Bron/Source : France 2 - Culture

Artist Jeanne-Claude, who co-created 'The Gates' with husband Christo, dies at age 74

Artist Jeanne-Claude, who created the 2005 Central Park installation "The Gates" and other large scale "wrapping" projects around the globe with her husband Christo, has died. She was 74.
Jeanne-Claude died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, her family said in an e-mail statement.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he spoke with Christo on Thursday morning and offered condolences on behalf of all New Yorkers.
"The Gates" festooned 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths with thousands of saffron drapes hung from specially designed frames. More than 5 million people saw "The Gates," and it was credited with injecting about $254 million into the local economy.
The family statement said Christo was deeply saddened by his wife's death but was "committed to honor the promise they made to each other many years ago: that the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude would continue." That included completing their current installation, "Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado" and "The Mastaba" a project in the United Arab Emirates.
The Colorado project — which they had done parts of on and off for decades — involves spanning miles of the river with woven fabric. They chose the location near Canon City because of its river rapids and access to roads and footpaths. Their other projects include wrapping the Reichstag in Germany.
The two artists met in Paris in 1958 and have been collaborating for 51 years on temporary public arts projects.
Jeanne-Claude once said that the couple, like parents who wouldn't favor one child over another, felt that, "each project is a child of ours."
But she added that their favorite project was, "the next one."
Plans for a memorial will be announced at a later date, but the family said they will donate her body to science, as was her wish.

Website : Christo and Jeanne-Claude

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Nine Dusseldorf Museums and Galleries prepare for Dusseldorf's Second Quadriennale

Art enthusiasts from Germany and abroad are looking forward to the second Quadriennale, which will open on September 10, 2010 and ends in January 2011. Nine Duesseldorf museums and galleries are preparing high quality exhibitions with considerable grants from the regional capital without which the ambitious exhibition plans would not be possible. Despite the general financial crisis, the city is supporting the Quadriennale with additional funds of approx. five million Euros. "With this Festival of Arts, the city with an extensive artistic tradition underscores its reputation as an international city of arts," said Mayor Dirk Elbers.
Art in Duesseldorf
Over the last few decades, Duesseldorf has developed into an important centre for modern and contemporary art in Germany. Many new and established museums and galleries as well as exhibition events are prominent in the city on the banks of the Rhine. The world famous Kunstakademie forms the core of the museum landscape. Many internationally acclaimed artists have studied and taught there, for example Joseph Beuys and Bernd and Hilla Becher and their students. Artists such as Byars, Broodthaers and Paik were enticed by the city and have worked there. However, numerous names from the younger generation of artists made their start in Duesseldorf and are now established in the international art world. Quadriennale 2010 – Kunstgegenwaertig
"Kunstgegenwaertig" – the title of this year's Quadriennale 2010. Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow. In what light was art cast that defined life in Duesseldorf in the 60s, 70s and 80s and also thereafter? A retrospective of the rich creation of art from these years, a time in which Duesseldorf rose to become an international centre of the art scene and had an influence on art way beyond the borders of Germany, is the starting point for further questions that are explored in many exhibitions. What significance does this art still have today? How does the current situation of the art scene in Duesseldorf and the surrounding area present itself? And: What significance will contemporary art in Duesseldorf have in the future? Along with taking a retrospective "back to the roots" look, a critical appraisal and current self-positioning will be undertaken. Regional Minister for Culture Hans Georg Lohe on the thematic focus: "With a retrospective focus, the Quadriennale 2010 opens up a wide spectrum of contemporary art from the last 50 years, showing the multi-facetted interaction and the great international appeal of the Duesseldorf art scene. This is illuminated by the various exhibitions that never cease to amaze." The programme: a focus with many facets The Quadriennale is already established as an important art event and in 2010 will also strengthen Duesseldorf's position as a long-term centre of art. In an entirely new form, a total of nine Duesseldorf museums and galleries will take part in the Quadriennale 2010 with exhibitions. In addition to individual exhibitions in institutions such as the museum kunst palast that will be exhibiting works by Nam June Paik, the K20 that will be displaying a comprehensive selection of works by Joseph Beuys‘, or the Foundation Palace and Park Benrath with its James Lee Byars exhibition, there will also be group exhibitions. For example, the K21 will focus on art from the eighties, the NRW-Forum Duesseldorf will open with the "THE RED BULLY. Stephen Shore and the New Duesseldorf Photography 1971-87“ photography exhibition, and the Akademie-Galerie will transform its rooms into an extensive installation of drawings by Joseph Beuys, Anthony Cragg and Peter Doig and many more.
The Kunsthalle Duesseldorf's contribution comprises two group exhibitions: In cooperation with KIT - Kunst im Tunnel, they are devoting themselves to the younger generations of Duesseldorf artists, displaying works by Katharina Grosse, Dirk Skreber and Björn Dahlem. In partnership with the Kunstverein fuer die Rheinlande und Westfalen, selected works by Marcel Broodthaers will be exhibited alongside current works by internationally renowned artists in the "La chambre de l'´éloge" exhibition.
For the first time the Julia Stoschek Collection, the imai - inter media institute with a Katharina Sieverding exhibition and the ZERO Foundation will also be taking part. With the title "germany premieres", the Duesseldorf galleries will present the positions of artists whose works have until now never been shown in Germany and will again confirm their reputation as being at the forefront of the active art scene with joint opening ceremonies on the first weekend of September 2010.
The accompanying program: an impetus for further discussion and reflections
The many Quadriennale 2010 activities will be introduced by a symposium in the Robert-Schumann- Saal that will invite visitors and experts alike to engage in intensive debate about the forthcoming exhibitions and the thematic questions that they pose. Under the title "Objekte fuer alle und keinen" ("Objects for everybody and nobody"), the complex triangular artist-artwork-viewer relationship will be discussed within an avant-garde context. – The symposium will take place on September 8th and 9th, 2010 in the Robert-Schumann-Saal.
Quadriennale GmbH
The City of Duesseldorf founded the Quadriennale GmbH in late 2008 to create sustainable content positioning and to ensure practical organisation of the Quadriennale. The Regional Minister for Culture, Hans-Georg Lohe, and Angela Eckert-Schweizer were elected as managing directors. The Chairman of the Supervisory Board is Mayor Dirk Elbers.

Website : Quadriennale 2010

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Reconstructed original cut of Fritz Lang's Metropolis to celebrate its premiere at the Berlinale 2010

Fritz Lang’s original cut of Metropolis from 1927 will return to the screen at the 60th Berlin International Festival in 2010. At a gala presentation in the Friedrichstadtpalast on 12 February 2010, the classic silent film - reconstructed and restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation – will celebrate its premiere 83 years after the original version had its world premiere. Based on the original score by Gottfried Huppertz, the screening will be accompanied by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under the direction of conductor Frank Strobel. Minister of State and Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs Bernd Neumann will attend the event.
Parallel to the Berlinale, the film will be premiered on 12 February in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main; the music for this screening will be performed by the Staatsorchester Braunschweig under the direction of Helmut Imig.
For decades crucial scenes from the film - whose restoration in 2001 led to it being the first film recognized as belonging to the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage – were considered lost. Due to the sensational discovery of a 16-mm negative in Buenos Aires in 2008 and its current restoration, Metropolis can now be shown in its almost completely restored - more than 30 minute longer – original version.
“Just about no other German film has inspired and influenced film history as greatly as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. We are especially pleased and honored to be able to present the reconstructed original cut of this legendary and seminal film classic at the festival’s 60th anniversary,” says Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick.
The restoration and reconstruction of Metropolis is currently one of the world’s most important film restoration projects. It is being carried out by the Wiesbaden-based Murnau Foundation in cooperation with ZDF and arte, and the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin), and with the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken (Buenos Aires). The original music by Gottfried Huppertz will be re-edited by the European FilmPhilharmonic / Die Film-Philarmonie GmbH. Restoration and re-screening are being funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt Rhine-Main, by the Verwertungsgesellschaft für Nutzungsrechte an Filmwerken mbH, as well as the DEFA Foundation. Transit Film GmbH (Munich) will be in charge of internationally distributing this most recent reconstructed version of Metropolis.
“Metropolis is a classic of film history and it set the standard for cinematic art worldwide. For this reason the UNESCO chose Metropolis to be the first film ever included in its “Memory of the World” register. It symbolizes the tradition and high quality of German film heritage, and its preservation is one of our top priorities. Which was why I felt it was very important to support the completion of Metropolis and in so doing close a huge gap in Germany’s film heritage. The Murnau Foundation has thus received 200,000 euros in funding from the BKM to help restore the silent film classic Metropolis,” states Minister of State and Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs Bernd Neumann.
Even today, Metropolis fascinates and affects contemporary film artists. The legend surrounding the film has also been kept alive by the fact that for decades, from a large number of sources, people had known about a longer version, but no prints of it could be found. Until footage – totaling some 30 minutes - was discovered in Buenos Aires, essential scenes from Metropolis were still missing, and this was the case even though a great deal of research had been conducted by generations of film historians and archivists. And so the restoration carried out just a few years ago by the Murnau Foundation and its former partners, and which presented Metropolis in unprecedented quality, remained incomplete.
This monumental film was first shortened a brief time after its premiere at the Berlin Ufa-Palast am Zoo on 10 January 1927. Approved by the Film Board, the 4189-meter-long version screened at this venue without success for four months; as a consequence, the Ufa withdrew the film and produced a much shorter version, 3241 meters in length, for release to movie theaters in the summer of 1927.
“The unwavering desire and unflagging efforts to restore what was believed to be Fritz Lang’s lost original cut of Metropolis epitomize the Murnau Foundation’s commitment to save and preserve our rich filmic heritage and make it accessible to the public. With the restoration and re-screening of Metropolis a dream has been fulfilled,” comments Eberhard Junkersdorf, Supervisory Board Chairman of the Murnau Foundation.
Since being established 43 years ago, the Murnau Foundation has applied itself to saving and preserving a large portion of Germany’s film heritage and making these outstanding cultural and film historical works accessible to the public. They range from the early days of motion pictures to the early 1960, i.e., 2000 silent films, 1000 talkies, and some 3000 short films (advertising, cultural and documentary films). In addition to Metropolis, they include some of the great classics of German cinema, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari), Die Nibelungen, The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel), Three Good Friends (Die Drei von der Tankstelle), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Münchhausen), Great Freedom No. 7 (Große Freiheit Nr. 7), and Helden.

Website : Berlinale 2010

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Bron/Source : 60 th Berlin International Film Festival

Antwerps kunstencentrum De Singel bespaart door een maand te sluiten

De acht grote Vlaamse cultuurinstellingen, het zwaarst getroffen bij de besparingsronde, overwegen creatieve oplossingen.
De acht huizen – twee musea, twee orkesten, een operahuis, een balletensemble, een kunstencentrum en een concertorganisatie – moeten in 2010 gemiddeld 4,5 procent besparen. Dat is het dubbele van de andere kunstenorganisaties.
Er valt niet echt één lijn te trekken. Het voornemen van minister Joke Schauvliege (CD&V) om een lineaire besparing door te voeren, blijkt niet op te gaan. Zo komt De Filharmonie uit op 1 procent besparing, De Singel op 6 procent. De Ancienne Belgique, de recentste van de eigen instellingen van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, wordt pas vanaf 2011 tot het clubje gerekend.
Waarin zal de besparing te voelen zijn? Vooral in de artistieke plannen, zo blijkt, en zo weinig mogelijk op het personeelsbudget.
Directeur Jerry Aerts van De Singel overweegt beide pistes. ‘Het wordt een moeilijke oefening', zegt hij. ‘Programmatie- en productiemaatregelen zullen we allemaal moeten nemen. De Singel krijgt een extra dotatie van 1,2 miljoen euro voor de opening van de nieuwbouw, maar moet anderzijds 350.000 euro snoeien. Aerts: ‘Het betekent dat we niet de acht personeelsleden kunnen aanwerven die we nodig hebben. In september 2010 zullen we ook een maand de deuren sluiten. Zo kunnen we de openingsfestiviteiten van oktober voorbereiden, en een maand minder programmatiebudget uitgegeven. Dat is onze enige variabele.'
Opera
Het Muhka kijkt aan tegen de standaardkorting van 4,5 procent. Directeur Bart De Baere: ‘We hebben net een renovatie afgerond met eigen middelen, maar wel binnen de afspraak van een groeitraject van de subsidies. Komt dat er niet, dan moeten we eigenlijk dubbel bezuinigen.' De raad van bestuur vroeg de directie om alle mogelijke scenario's uit te werken. ‘Ook de minst wenselijke', zegt De Baere.
De Vlaamse Opera moet 4,5 procent of 600.000 euro besparen. Directeur Aviel Cahn: ‘Het kan nog meer zijn, want van de Nationale Loterij of de steden Gent en Antwerpen weten we niets. Blijft het bij 600.000, dan zullen we kleine nuances aanbrengen en moet er aan het personeel niet geraakt worden.'Chantal Pauwels, de directeur communicatie van het Ballet van Vlaanderen, denkt dat het moeilijk wordt om het artistieke programma te vrijwaren.
Eind deze week heeft ze als woordvoerster van ‘de acht' een onderhoud met Joke Schauvliege. ‘We hebben audit na audit achter de rug, en vragen nu een duidelijke visie van de minister.'

Website : De Singel

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Bron/Source : De Standaard

Munich celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Schack-Galerie

One hundred years ago, the Schack-Galerie opened on Prinzregentenstrasse in Munich. It was commissioned by Emperor Wilhelm II, who also had the adjoining Prussian Embassy built. Designed by Max Littmann, the architect of the Prinzregententheater in Munich, it was based on plans first drawn up by Adolf von Hildebrand.
With its extensive holdings of paintings by Moritz von Schwind, Anselm Feuerbach and Arnold Böcklin, the Sammlung Schack is one of the most important collections of German 19th-century paintings. It was founded by Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack who, apart from Ludwig I, was the most significant collector of contemporary art at that time in Germany. Up until his death in 1894, he acquired some two hundred paintings by German artists and around eighty copies of works by Old Masters. After Count Schack’s death, the collection was bequeathed to the German Emperor who had the present gallery erected in 1909. In 1939 it passed into the ownership of the State of Bavaria and has been under the management of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen ever since.
The ground floor of the gallery was renovated last year with a view to the centenary celebrations. The rooms and small cabinets, which previously had light walls, have now been painted in darker colors, providing a more effective backdrop for paintings of the Romantic period. Since then, works by Moritz von Schwind, Carl Rottmann, Friedrich Preller and Carl Spitzweg can be seen against walls painted in a bold blue and red. At the same time, a new method of labeling was introduced with explanations of individual works. This underlines the correlation between painting and literature, between the collector and writer, Count Schack, and the artists and the pictures in his collection. Visitors gain an insight into the pictorial and intellectual world of 19th-century Germany in the Sammlung Schack in Munich, in an intensity that is to be found in virtually no other museum.
Renovation work was continued this year on the first floor, where key works in the collection, which include paintings by Arnold Böcklin and Anselm Feuerbach, as well as Franz von Lenbach’s "Young Shepherd", are hung. At the same time, the largest room in the gallery, used for many years for meetings by the neighboring State Chancellery since the end of World War II, has also been remodeled and turned into the new Copy Room. This is where nineteen, mostly large-format copies of Venetian Renaissance painting are shown, which form a focal point within the collection as a whole. Major works such as Giorgione’s "Pastoral Concert" in the Louvre, Titian’s "Pesaro Madonna" in the Frari Basilica and "The Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Accademia" in Venice, as well as the "Portrait of Emperor Karl V" in the Prado, have been grouped together in the Copy Room.
Artists who painted the copies include August Wolf and Ernst von Liphart, as well as Franz von Lenbach in particular, whose copies of Titian’s works for Count Schack are considered among the best paintings of their kind executed in the 19th-century in Germany. A key part of the collection, from the point of view of its founder, has once again been given the attention it deserves. The remodeling and furnishing of the Copy Room have been made possible thanks to the generosity of private benefactors and are a particular highlight of this anniversary year. Private benefactors have also made it possible for new floodlighting on the façade to be installed that will bathe the building in a new light in the evenings.
The renovation and re-opening of the building have prompted a change in name. From now on, the completely renovated Schack-Galerie will be known as the Sammlung Schack.

Website : Schack-Galerie

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Renowned british architect David Chipperfield restores Folkwang Museum in Essen

British architect David Chipperfield presented the new Folkwang Museum in Essen, once considered the most beautiful in the world and which was reduced to rubble by Allied bombs during World War II.
The new Folkwang Museum in all its splendor will transform Essen’s museums landscape once it opens the Capital of Culture year 2010. Funded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, and penned by David Chipperfield Architects, the new design deliberately preserves the autonomy of the old listed building.
The new exhibition areas bathed in natural light continue its architectural tradition. The creativity that has gone into the design of the rest of the building is evident, for example, in the magnificent open stairway that will lead from the Bismarckstrasse into the new entrance foyer, the latter designed as an open inner courtyard with a café and restaurant, complete with a museum bookshop, and shielded by a glass façade looking out onto the street.
The Folkwang Museum owes its excellent international reputation to the outstanding collections of 19th century German and French paintings, Classical Modernism and post-war art. The photographic and graphic collections and the integrated German Poster Museum are also important components. Along with its large-scale public exhibitions, worthy of the international attention they attract, the museum's activities now focus primarily on contemporary art.
David Chipperfield was born in London in 1953. After receiving his Diploma from the Architectural Association in London he worked at the practices of Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster and in 1984 established his own practice, David Chipperfield Architects. The practice currently has over 150 staff from 20 countries and offices in London, Berlin, Milan, and a representative office in Shanghai.
In 1999, David Chipperfield was awarded the Tessenow Gold Medal and presented an exhibition with Tessenow Stipendiat and Spanish architect Andrés Jaque at the Hellerau Festspielhaus, Germany. In 2000 David Chipperfield represented Britain at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. In 2003 he was made Honorary Member of the Florence Academy of Art and Design and in 2004 he was awarded a CBE for services to architecture. In 2007, two of Chipperfield’s buildings (America's Cup Building and the Museum of Modern Literature) made the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist, with the Museum of Modern Literature winning.
The Neues Museum in Berlin opened to the public in October 2009. David Chipperfield Architects is currently working on the Turner Contemporary in Margate, the James Simon Gallery – the New Entrance Building for the Museum Island in Berlin, the extension to the San Michele Cemetery Island in Venice, the expansion of the Saint Louis Art Museum, and many other residential, cultural, commercial and product design projects.

Website : Folkwang Museum

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

L'Iran et le monde à Paris Photo

Le salon de la photographie Paris Photo a lieu au Carrousel du Louvre du 19 au 22 novembre

Paris Photo, où sont représentés 102 exposants français et étrangers dont 89 galeries et 13 éditeurs, propose cette année une exploration de la scène photographique arabe et iranienne.
D'autres galeries abordent parallèlement la question du regard occidental sur l'Orient.
Paris Photo est à 75% étranger, avec 23 pays représentés. Cette année, l'Allemagne est la plus présente, avec 11 galerie, suivie des Etats-Unis (10), du Royaume-Uni (7), des Pays-Bas(6), du Japon et de l'Espagne (5).
Parmi les galeries français, on peut noter l'arrivée de La B.A.N.K, de Patricia Dorfman, de Dominique Fiat, de Françoise Paviot et de la Galerie RX.
Regards arabes et iraniens et l'Orient vu de l'OuestUne plate-forme articulée en trois parties présentera la scène émergente arabe et iranienne, avec un choix de photos rares de la Fondation arabe pour l'image de Beyrouth, un aperçu de la jeune création contemporaine et une programmation de vidéos.
Des galeries mettront en avant des artistes établis: les Iraniens Abbas Kiarostami (Purdy Hicks) et Abbas (Magnum Gallery), la Marocaine Yto Barrada (Polaris), l'Egyptien Youssef Nabil (Stevenson), le Palestinien Taysir Batniji (La B.A.N.K), le Libanais Fouad El Koury (Tanit).
D'autres galeries montreront des orientalistes du XIXe (Baudoin Lebon, Serge Plantureux, Hershkowitz) ou les regards contemporains de Gabriele Basilico sur Beyrouth, Philippe Chancel sur Dubaï, Lars Tunbjörk sur Oman...

Website : Paris Photo

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Bron/Source : France 2 - Culture

Langley Academy designed by Norman Foster officially opens

The Langley Academy, designed by Foster + Partners, is being officially opened by Sir Matthew Pinsent CBE. It is an exemplar of sustainable design, a theme which is showcased by the building itself. The first academy to specialize in museum learning, it also highlights rowing, cricket and science in its curriculum.
With an enclosed full-height atrium at the heart of the three-storey building, the social life of the school revolves around this assembly space for 1,100 students. A recurrent element in several other of Foster + Partners’ academy buildings, the atrium is defined by a sense of transparency and openness – like a gallery of learning – which in this case also resonates with the museum theme. Inside the atrium there are three yellow drums raised above the floor on circular columns. These two-storey pods house the Academy’s ten science laboratories, reinforcing the importance of science teaching. A dedicated sports and culture block contains specialist facilities for music and drama including a fully equipped theatre, a TV and sound recording studio, soundproofed practice rooms and a rehearsal space, sports hall and lecture theatre. The academy’s two light and airy covered streets extend from the atrium and are lined with 38 classrooms.
The environmental features save 20% in water consumption and approximately 150 tonnes of CO2 per year compared to a traditional academy and are used in the teaching of science and environmental issues. Students can see the solar collectors on the roof and the workings of the exposed plant room, as well as the network of pipes that illustrate how energy is generated and carried through the building. Rain water is collected and stored and grey water filtered for reuse in sanitation and irrigation; a system of horizontal louvers provides shade; and the building has been configured to allow out-of-hours use by the wider community, ensuring its sustainability over time. Foster + Partners and Buro Happold collaborated on the environmental design.
Nigel Dancey, a senior partner and design director at Foster + Partners said: “Environmental performance and appearance are indivisible at The Langley Academy. The school pioneers a revolutionary new educational concept which draws on the theme of museums and galleries, so that the school itself is like an exhibit, with its physical manifestation a showcase and educational tool for environmental design.”

Website : Foster + Partners

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Rijksmuseum announces 'Tavern Scenes Exhibition'

Roker, kijkend in een kruik - Cornelis Dusart

The Rijksmuseum’s Tavern Scenes exhibition gives an idea of what it was like to be in a tavern in the 16th and 17th-century. Taverns, fairs, village revelries and the accompanying feasting and fighting were favorite themes in art of the Low Countries in the 16th and 17th-centuries, and were meant to be both entertaining and educational. This graphic pub-crawl in 18 prints and drawings takes in some of the most colorful watering-holes in the Rijksmuseum Print Room collection.
Princes would pay huge sums to add a painting of rustic merrymakers by Pieter Bruegel to their collection. Prints after his drawings appeared in huge numbers and inspired generations of Dutch artists. Descendants of Bruegel’s villagers are featured in this presentation in the raucous drunkards depicted by Adriaen Brouwer, and likewise in the amiable drinking companions portrayed by Cornelis Dusart later in the 17th-century. Also shown are prints and drawings by masters such as Rembrandt, Adriaen van Ostade and Cornelis Bega who knew how to depict life in Holland’s taverns like no other.
"Tavern Scenes" runs from December 1, 2009 to March 1, 2010 at the Rijksmuseum. Since March 2009, the permanent presentation at the Rijksmuseum, "The Masterpieces", has featured a rotating small exhibition of prints and drawings from the museum’s magnificent collections of art and historical objects.

Website : Rijksmuseum

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Egypt's famous tomb of Tutankhamun for 5-year renovation project

Egypt's famous Tomb of Tutankhamun will undergo a five-year project to clean and restore the lavish wall paintings in the underground chambers of the boy king whose golden mask and artifacts have long awed the world.
The project to restore the country's most famous tomb is the latest collaboration between Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Los Angeles-based Getty Conservation Institute, which in the past restored nearby tombs and designed airtight cases to display Egypt's mummies.
Since the small, four-roomed tomb and its famous golden burial mask were discovered in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter, observers have noted strange brown spots marring the wall paintings.
"I always see the tomb of King Tut and wonder about those spots, which no scientist has been able to explain," said Zahi Hawass, the head of the SCA, in a statement.
"Now I am happy that the Getty will look at the tomb and preserve its beautiful scenes," he added. Thousands of tourists visit the underground chambers in the Valley of the Kings every month, bringing heat and humidity, which damage the more than 3,000-year-old tomb. Tutankhamun wasn't Egypt's most powerful or important king, but his staggering treasures, rumors of a mysterious curse that plagued Carter and his team — debunked by experts long ago — and several books and TV documentaries dedicated to him have added to his intrigue. Archaeologists in recent years have tried to resolve lingering questions over how he died and his precise royal lineage. In 2005, scientists removed Tut's mummy from his tomb and placed it into a portable CT scanner for 15 minutes to obtain a three-dimensional image. The scans were the first done on an Egyptian mummy.
The results ruled out that Tut was violently murdered — but stopped short of definitively concluding how he died around 1323 B.C.
A recent highly publicized global tour of Tutankhamun's artifacts drew more than 4 million people during its initial four-city American leg. The conservation plan will involve a two-year research period to determine the causes of deterioration, followed by three years of implementation. The SCA said it had yet to decide how long the tomb would be closed during that time.
The Getty Conservation institute works to advance conservation techniques for art, particularly ancient sites, around the world.
Coppyricht2009 The Assiociates Press

Website : Tutankhamun via Wikipedia

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Ten days for Oppositional Architecture

The transformation of the urban landscape within the last decades has increasingly been dominated by the demands of capitalist utilization. Due to the current crisis, however, which goes far beyond a mere crisis of the real estate and financial market, these neoliberal politics and attendant forms of production of space have been subject to a loss of legitimation. For this reason, not only do the dominance and promises of the privatization model, the free market and private property have to be questioned, but also the conventions of the space-producing professions that follow and materialize these policies.
In this context the event “Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture” takes up the task of exploring possibilities and conditions of a socially committed architectural practice. Therefore the narrow boundaries of the profession have to be left behind. We hence invite activists, geographers, architects, planners, and economists representing different critical approaches to discuss and develop concepts and practices that not only try to oppose and challenge the capitalist mode of production of space, but also try to go beyond it – strategies of de-commodification, re-appropriation and alternative production of space. We will look at already existing spatial actions of resistance as well as search for possibilities to further theorize them: How can these strategies and alternative practices be turned into social and political forces towards post-capitalist spaces?

From November 12 to November 21, New York City. For more information, click here.

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Bron/Source : Arch Daily

Germany celebrates memory of Berlin Wall falling with Museum opening and memorials

With concerts and memorials, Germans will celebrate the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down 20 years ago.

On that cold night, they danced atop the wall, arms raised in victory, hands clasped in friendship and giddy hope. Years of separation and anxiety melted into the unbelievable reality of freedom and a future without border guards, secret police, informers and rigid communist control. Germans are celebrating with concerts boasting Beethoven and Bon Jovi; a memorial service for the 136 people killed trying to cross over from 1961 to 1989; candle lightings and 1,000 towering plastic foam dominoes to be placed along the wall's route and tipped over.

On Nov. 9, 1989, East Germans came in droves, riding their sputtering Trabants, motorcycles and rickety bicycles. Hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands crossed over the following days.

Stores in West Berlin stayed open late and banks gave out 100 Deutschemarks in "welcome money," then worth about $50, to each East German visitor.

The party lasted four days and by Nov. 12 more than 3 million of East Germany's 16.6 million people had visited, nearly a third of them to West Berlin, the rest through gates opening up along the rest of the fenced, mined frontier that cut their country in two.

Sections of the nearly 155 kilometers (100 miles) of wall were pulled down and knocked over. Tourists chiseled off chunks to keep as souvenirs. Tearful families reunited. Bars gave out free drinks. Strangers kissed and toasted each other with champagne.

Klaus-Hubert Fugger, a student at the Free University in West Berlin, was having drinks at a pub when people began coming "who looked a bit different."

Customers bought the visitors round after round. By midnight, instead of going home, Fugger and three others took a taxi to the Brandenburg Gate, long a no man's land, and scaled the 12-foot (nearly four meter) wall with hundreds of others.

"There were really like a lot of scenes, like people crying, because they couldn't get the situation," said Fugger, now 43. "A lot of people came with bottles" of champagne and sweet German sparkling wine.

Fugger spent the next night on the wall, too. A newsmagazine photo shows him wrapped in a scarf. "Then the wall was crowded all over, thousands of people, and you couldn't move ... you had to push through the masses of the people," he said.

Angela Merkel, Germany's first chancellor from the former communist East, recalled the euphoria in an address last week to the U.S. Congress.

"Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened and we all walked through it: onto the streets, into the churches, across the borders," Merkel said. "Everyone was given the chance to build something new, to make a difference, to venture a new beginning."

The wall the communists built at the height of the Cold War and which stood for 28 years is mostly gone. Some parts still stand, at an outdoor art gallery or as part of an open-air museum. Its route through the city is now streets, shopping centers, apartment houses. The only reminder of it are a series of inlaid bricks that trace its path.

Checkpoint Charlie, the prefab that was long the symbol of the Allied presence and of Cold War tension, has been moved to a museum in western Berlin.

Potsdamer Platz, the vibrant square that was destroyed during World War II and became a no man's land during the Cold War, is full of upscale shops selling everything from iPods to grilled bratwursts.

At a ceremony in Berlin Oct. 31, Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor who presided over the opening of the wall, stood side by side with the superpower presidents of the time, George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.

After the decades of shame that followed the Nazi era, Kohl suggested, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of their country 11 months later gave Germans pride.

"We don't have many reasons in our history to be proud," said Kohl, now 79. But as chancellor, "I have nothing better, nothing to be more proud of, than German reunification."

In an interview in Moscow with Associated Press Television News, Gorbachev said it was a catalyst for peace.

"No matter how hard it was, we worked, we found mutual understanding and we moved forward. We started cutting down nuclear weapons, scaling down the armed forces in Europe and resolving other issues," he said.

It all began with a routine late afternoon news conference. On Nov. 9, 1989, Guenter Schabowski, a member of East Germany's ruling Politburo, casually declared that East Germans would be free to travel to the West immediately.

Later, he tried to clarify his comments and said the new rules would take hold at midnight, but events moved faster as the word spread.

At a remote crossing in Berlin's south, Annemarie Reffert and her 15-year-old daughter made history by becoming the first East Germans to cross the border.

Reffert, now 66, remembers the East German soldiers being at a loss when she tried to cross the border.

"I argued that Schabowski said we were allowed to go over," she said. The border soldiers relented. A customs official was astonished that she had no luggage.

"All we wanted was to see if we really could travel," Reffert said.

Years later, Schabowski told a TV interviewer that he had gotten mixed up. It was not a decision but a draft law that the Politburo was set to discuss. He thought it was a decision that had already been approved.

That night, around midnight, border guards swung open the gates. Through Checkpoint Charlie, down the Invalidenstrasse, across the Glienicke Bridge, scores of people streamed into West Berlin, unabated, unfettered, eyes agog.

Associated Press Writers Nesha Starcevic and Laura Stevens in Frankfurt and Melissa Eddy and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

Website : The Berlin Wall

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Bron/Source : Artdaily

Qui a inventé la bande dessinée ?

La bande dessinée est l'héritière des romans en estampes. Tintin n'a pas inventé les bulles parlantes. Le 9e Art était rebelle à la naissance. Il le reste.

Peut-on assimiler cette langue d'images aux arts primitifs des peintres rupestres ? La présence de cases et de bulles parlantes est-elle déterminante pour dater sa naissance ? Thierry Smolderen, théoricien de la bande dessinée et professeur à l'Ecole européenne supérieure de l'image, a publié de nombreux essais sur la BD. Pour clore l'Année de la bande dessinée à Bruxelles, cet érudit remonte le temps des récits en images dans les salons Art nouveau de la Maison Autrique. Son regard scie les clichés du genre et redéfinit les origines de la bande dessinée comme « un court-circuit humoristique entre le monde moderne et la culture populaire ».

L'auteur relie les audaces de la BD contemporaine et du roman graphique aux pionniers du roman en estampes des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Rebelles à tout académisme, ces Hogarth, Töpffer, Cruikshank, Oberlander ou Feininger voyageaient aux frontières de l'image, détournaient les lignes, digéraient les arts nouveau, cubiste, japonisant ou industriel… Ils recycleront même les vieilles banderoles parlantes médiévales pour les transformer en bulles. A la Maison Autrique, ce sont eux les véritables dynamiteurs de la bande dessinée moderne, toujours en quête d'échappatoire au dessin appris.
L'exposition n'a pas besoin de mots pour faire réfléchir aux connexions graphiques et narratives entre passé et présent. Dans l'ironie du trait avant-gardiste du Suisse Töpffer, on devine, par exemple, les malices de l'Américain Chris Ware. Un siècle et demi sépare pourtant Va petit livre de Jimmy Corrigan, prix du meilleur album au Festival d'Angoulême en 2003. Devant l'essai humoristique Des lignes et des points de George Cruikshank (1817), ou le Rondo Allegretto de Grandville, paru dans le Magasin pittoresque (1840), le bédéphile perçoit l'écho minimaliste du Diablotus de Lewis Trondheim, chef de file de la nouvelle bande dessinée française et Grand Prix d'Angoulême pour l'ensemble de son œuvre en 2006. Et comment ne pas penser aux guerilleros belgo-progressistes de la 5e Couche, face au Voyage de Monsieur Boniface de Cham (1844), une fable caustique contre l'aliénation répétitive et l'ennui des stéréotypes ?
Thierry Smolderen explique, au fil d'un livre et de cette exposition « immersive », pourquoi et comment la BD n'a jamais fini d'être moderne : « Hergé et Tintin ont installé dans la bande dessinée franco-belge, l'idée d'une forme esthétique et narrative stable, faisant oublier les innombrables expérimentations qui la nourrissent depuis sa naissance. En fait, la BD est issue de la confrontation entre des signes visuels issus de sources différentes, qui viennent se combattre, faire collision, pour faire rire. Elle évolue en fonction des techniques et des autres médias qui l'entourent. Elle interroge le monde des signes. C'est pourquoi des ancêtres comme Cham ou Cruik-shank paraissent si proches de l'underground contemporain. »
A travers les planches originales de Little Nemo ou de Krazy Kat, les journaux d'époque, les bois gravés du XIXe siècle, les films de Winsor McCay, les agrandissements du Yellow Kid ou de l'analyse de la Beauté par William Hogarth, le parcours de la Maison Autrique exprime toute cette diversité d'image dont la bande dessinée est capable. « Elle a tout absorbé, de la littérature au cinéma et à l'internet, résume Smolderen. C'est un prolongement direct de l'art baroque, avec des touches de modernité. »

Naissances de la bande dessinée, jusqu'au 25 avril 2010, Maison Autrique, 266 chée de Haecht, 1030 Schaerbeek

Website :Maison Autrique

FIC123.BE een website met info en cultuur.
Bron/Source : Le Soir

Museo Ferragamo goes online

Italian fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo has taken a museum detailing its history and culture online, allowing young designers to add their creative touch to its shoe models.
The website, http://www.museoferragamo.com/, is dedicated to its "shoemaker to the stars" founder and includes pictures, vintage films relating to the Florence-based maison, which is known for its shoes, silk ties and scarves as well as handbags.
The fashion house, for whom Claudia Schiffer has modeled, was founded in the 1920s by the late Salvatore Ferragamo who started out designing footwear and made shoes for the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo and Audrey Hepburn.
Visitors can browse through Ferragamo archives as well as book tickets to the actual museum in Florence. Artists can download famous shoe models, redesign them and send them back with a panel of judges picking a winner to join a virtual gallery every three months.

Website : Museo Salvatore Ferregamo

FIC123.BE een website met info en cultuur.

Bron/Source : Artdaily

' A'A ' - 'L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui' reparaît

"L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui" s'offre un nouveau départ qu'elle doit à Jean Nouvel, François Fontès et Alexandre Allard
Le nouveau bimensuel, totalement bilingue pour garder un esprit international, a pour ambition d'explorer l'architecture "de manière transversale, en liaison avec l'art, le design et toutes les pensées".
Un million d'euros ont été engagés pour sauver la revue historique du mouvement moderne, "AA", fondée par André Bloc en 1930.
Après le décès en 1966 du peintre et sculpteur, qui liait art et architecture, la revue décline et a failli, ces dernières années, disparaître. La nouvelle formule, tire à 10.000 exemplaires. Elle compte déjà "plus de 2.000 abonnés dont 40% d'étrangers", se félicite l'homme d'affaires Alexandre Allard, qui espère arriver rapidement à 5.000 abonnés.
Outre Jean Nouvel, conseiller de la rédaction, plusieurs architectes de renom comme Frank Ghery, Winy Maas, Anne Lacaton, Jean-Philippe Vassal mais aussi le designer Philippe Starck ou l'ancien ministre de la Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres font partie du comité éditorial.
Le nouveau "'A'A'" porte le numéro 374, en signe de continuité avec "L'Architecture d'Aujourd 'hui". Mais, souligne Jean Nouvel, le titre a été "reconçu à 100%". Chaque cahier à son ADN, assure l'architecte.
Les pages "A la loupe" (Focus on) scrutent longuement l'Ecole d'architecture de Nantes de Lacaton et Vassal. "Nord-Sud" donne la parole à l'architecte Francis Kéré, du Burkina Faso, qui raconte comment il s'est appuyé sur les savoir-faire traditionnels africains pour construire une école dans un village. Dans le cahier "Vu par" (Seen by), Nouvel commente la dernière réalisation européenne de son ami Frank Ghery, le centre Novartis à Bâle (Suisse). Il a aimé.
Paysages, films, concerts, sciences : la revue pose des capteurs sur ce début du XXIème siècle, parfois aux antipodes, comme les collages de JR ou les sculptures de Veilhan à Versailles. "Un architecte doit être un regardeur professionnel", attentif à ce qui se passe autour de lui, relève le prix Pritzker 2008.
On apprécie par ailleurs que l'architecte Claude Parent nous restitue l'univers de l'AA d'avant, lorsque Bloc, dont il était proche, "ouvrait ses colonnes à des étudiants" dans un monde architectural clos. Parrain de ce premier numéro, il défend une revue engagée, pédagogique et milite pour que ce ne soit pas "qu'une revue de plus qui ne contentera que ceux qui seront publiés et encore". "Comme dit Nouvel, rappelle Parent, la revue doit inciter au questionnement".
Et à ceux de la profession qui craignent que le nouvel AA soit l'instrument du seul Jean Nouvel, ce dernier répond que c'est une "oeuvre collective" et qu'elle est "ouverte à toutes les tendances".

Website : 'A'A'

FIC123.BE een website met info en cultuur.

Bron/Source : France 2

Expositie geeft kijkje in leven Marroncultuur

Hoe kan een klein volk als de Marrons uit Suriname overleven in een wereld van snel groeiende globalisering? Dat is de centrale vraag die aan bod komt op de expositie 'Kunst van overleven', vanaf vrijdag te zien in het Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.
De Marrons, vroeger bosnegers genoemd, zijn afstammelingen van Afrikanen die in Suriname vanaf de 18e eeuw in de slavernij belandden en zich daar vervolgens uit wisten te bevrijden. Ze vestigden zich in het oerwoud, waar vandaag de dag nog altijd een derde van de in totaal ongeveer 120.000 Marrons leeft. De rest is vertrokken naar de hoofdstad Paramaribo, buurland Frans-Guyana en Nederland. Volgens conservator Alex van Stipriaan groeit de gemeenschap nog steeds en is het inmiddels de derde bevolkingsgroep van het Zuid-Amerikaanse land. Het is volgens hem ,,volstrekt uniek'' dat in Suriname nog een zelfstandig volk, dat is voortgekomen uit de slavernij, met een eigen cultuur en grondgebied leeft.
De tentoonstelling laat de bezoekers aan de hand van ongeveer zevenhonderd voorwerpen en bijna dertig filmpjes kennismaken met de cultuur. Het is voor het eerst dat deze collectie voor het Nederlandse publiek is te zien. De expositie bestaat uit verschillende thema's, zoals religie, muziek, man-vrouw verhoudingen en rijkdom. Volgens Stipriaan zijn de Marrons altijd een heel dynamisch volk geweest. Ze kregen echter ook flink wat tegenslagen. Door de aanleg van het Brokopondo-stuwmeer moesten 5000 tot 6000 mensen verhuizen. Ook oorlogen en natuurrampen hebben de geschiedenis van de bevolkingsgroep getekend.
Rijk
Bijzonder is dat de binnenlanden rijk zijn aan grondstoffen. ,,Ze wonen letterlijk op goud'', aldus de conservator. ,,Hun grondgebied is daardoor heel belangrijk.'' Naast goud is in de woonomgeving onder meer hardhout, rubber een aardolie te vinden. De exploitatie brengt het volk echter veel schade toe. Zo leidt de goudwinning met kwik tot vergiftiging van het water.
De expositie, die tot en met 9 mei 2010 is te zien, is een initiatief van beeldend kunstenaar en tentoonstellingmaker Felix de Rooy. Hij gaf hiermee samen met Van Stipriaan gehoor aan een soort noodkreet van de Marrongezagsdragers. Die gaven aan dat er iets moest veranderen om ervoor te zorgen dat de cultuur niet zou verdwijnen. Naast de expositie zet het Tropenmuseum in het Surinaamse binnenland twee cultuurhuizen op waar Marronerfgoed kan worden getoond en bewaard.

Website : Tropenmuseum

FIC123.BE een website met info en cultuur.

Bron/Source : Leeuwarder Courant