2016-06-30

8022 - Artfox.eu – The first Belgian online market platform for art galleries in the Benelux.

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Artfox.eu proofs that art is accessible for everyone. It is the first, Belgian, online market platform that represents qualitative art galleries in the Benelux. Experienced, as well as exploring art lovers can search for their matching piece of art. David Fonteyne created this innovative concept and believes that the art gallery is the only place of trust for discovering and buying artworks. That’s why artfox.eu only represents galleries within reachable distance. The website launched in February 2016 and already counts a nice selection of art galleries.

The art world is often experienced as an exclusive, closed, high-end society, but in fact, it is a very accessible, exciting world where you can already buy quality with a limited budget” – David Fonteyne


With Artfox.eu David wants everybody to get rid of this one-sided view.
Therefore, prices and other information have to be as tranparent as possible.
Besides a discovery tool that provides more insight in the needs, it is a time-saving tool to compare what the art market has to offer.

' A time-saving tool for the art expert and a crucial backing for the exploring art lover '

Born in an art-minded family, David has a gut feeling to choose the right galleries. That's how Artfox.eu is becoming an established, central, online market platform with valuable art galleries.

In a few short steps Artfox.eu connects you to the most beautiful artworks within accessible reach.

Do you also want to find the way to one of our hidden gems?
Hunt for art at Artfox.eu !

Please contact David for more information 0487.82.66.55 or sent an e-mail to david@artfox.eu


 
 
 


2016-06-29

8021 - Van Gogh Museum and Hyundai enter partnership

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The Van Gogh Museum has entered into a three-year partnership with Hyundai. The sponsorship offered by the car manufacturer will facilitate the production of three important Korean translations: of the museum map, the multimedia tour and of visitor information on the corporate museum website. Last year, the museum welcomed a growing number of Korean visitors. The partnership with the Van Gogh Museum will allow Hyundai to further strengthen their brand awareness in the Netherlands and beyond.

Commenting on the partnership, Axel Rüger (Director of the Van Gogh Museum) said: ‘We share a common passion for the work and life of Van Gogh, the world’s most famous Dutch artist. That forms exceedingly strong foundations. Our new partner also recognises the vital importance of sustainability, as does the Van Gogh Museum’.

Hyung Cheong Kim (President and CEO of Hyundai Motor Europe): At Hyundai Motor, we believe in the strong relationship between the art of design and the art of technology, and we aim to make this connection accessible to people all over the globe through our products. Our collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum as a leading art institution marks an important step to introduce a wider audience worldwide to the beauty of art and design’.

Wang-Chul Shin (President of Hyundai Motor) added: ‘The sustainable character of the Van Gogh Museum appealed to us, as did the opportunity to allow our fellow countrymen and women the chance to get better acquainted with the life and work of Vincent van Gogh’.

Rising numbers of Korean visitors
The Van Gogh Museum is welcoming a growing number of Korean visitors: 8,000 visitors in 2014 rose to 25,000 visitors in 2015. This trend is mirrored online, where the number of visitors rose by 25% in 2015 compared to the previous year. In order to further stimulate this growing interest, the website, multimedia tour and museum map will all be translated into Korean. With their sponsorship, Hyundai is also contributing to the museum’s core activities.

Hyundai IONIQ in Sunflowers
Hyundai will be making several models of the Hyundai IONIQ available to the Van Gogh Museum. To mark the occasion, the car manufacturer drew inspiration from Van Gogh’s iconic work Sunflowers to create a specially-designed edition of one of the IONIQ models.

Museum alliances around the world
The partnership with the Van Gogh Museum dovetails with Hyundai’s vision of collaborating with leading international museums in order to unite design and art. Hyundai has already entered into partnerships with the Tate Modern in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea.


 
 
 
 

2016-06-28

8020 - New dealers at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair 2016 London confirmed as stands sell out

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The LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair will, for the eighth year running, bring together the very best in art and antiques from reputable dealers and experts in their fields. On offer will be works from an array of disciplines including jewellery, furniture, carpets, tapestries, antiquities, timepieces, ceramics, silver and fine art.

LAPADA Fair stands, which have sold out for 2016, are only open to members of LAPADA the Association of Art & Antiques Dealers. Members abide by a strict Code of Practice and an expert committee of 70 specialists pre-vet every piece individually, ensuring the authenticity of all work shown at the Fair.

Mieka Sywak, Director of the LAPADA Fair, comments: “We are pleased to announce that exhibitor stands at the 2016 LAPADA Fair were sold out by May 2016. With four months to go until the LAPADA Fair, this is exceptionally early compared with previous years. This result reflects the hard work and commitment shown by the Association to ensure the Fair remains popular and relevant to buyers and collectors alike. Dealers, in every discipline, have ensured the works they offer are of exceptional quality and presented beautifully. As organisers we have focused our efforts in creating an inviting atmosphere for visitors and are grateful to our partners and sponsors who have supported us in this endeavor.”

With a total of 113 members taking part, the country’s most prestigious event in the art and antiques calendar welcomes a host of new dealers with exciting and original works to tempt visitors.

New exhibitors
D. Larsson Interiör & Antikhandel, specialist in predominantly 18th and 19th century Swedish painted furniture and decorative arts, has a reputation for sourcing fine quality examples, individually selected for their design, integrity and original historic surfaces. R. N. Myers & Son will offer beautiful antique furniture, ceramics and works of art, including English and some European furniture with an emphasis on the 17th and 18th centuries, English and Oriental ceramics, paintings, textiles, works of art or more unusual oddities. Tim Saltwell will bring a selection of his finest 19th and early 20th century English and Continental furniture, bronzes, ormolu, mirrors and French clocks.

Pushkin Antiques Ltd will offer an exceptional selection of silver from England, China, Germany, India, Burma, Europe and Russia alongside collectables, including Louis Vuitton travel cases and luxury interior pieces.

Richard Hoppé Fine Antiques will bring continental glass, scent bottles, ceramic tiles. M&D Moir will also bring glass, including Art Nouveau and Art Deco pieces by the great makers René Lalique, Emile Gallé, Daum and Loetz, amongst others.

Kevin Page Oriental Art Limited will offer fine Japanese works of art from the Meiji era (18681912) including multi-metalware, Jizai, Okimono, lacquer and Shibayama, Satsuma, Netsuke, and cloissone, as well as Chinese ceramics and furniture.

Serhat Ahmet Ltd will be exhibiting a diverse range of fine European porcelain, including Meissen, KPM Berlin, Sèvres and Vienna, and objets de vertu from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Michael German Antiques, specialist in antique walking canes, fine arms and armour, and interesting maritime artefacts, will showcase a selection of works from these fascinating and unusual subjects.

Gideon Hatch will bring a selection of his contemporary rug designs, as well as antique rugs and textiles.

Portal Painters will exhibit work from artists Lizzie Riches, Peter Layzell and Steve Easby, whose finely detailed figurative paintings have a surreal flavour. Beaux Arts Bath will offer works from pre-eminent, established and emerging contemporary sculptors and painters, including Andrew Crocker, Anna Gillespie, Anthony Scott, Elisabeth Frink, Nathan Ford and Simon Allen. Flying Colours Gallery will showcase distinctive and desirable fine art paintings, with an emphasis on well known Scottish artists.

Whitford Fine Art will bring European and British 20th century painting and sculpture, with an emphasis on Modernism, Post-War Abstraction and Pop Art, artists include Caziel, Clive Barker, William Gear and Georges Bernède. Manya Igel Fine Arts will showcase a fine selection of 20th and 21st century British art, notably by Royal Academicians, members of the NEAC and other established artists.

Boundary Gallery will offer works from Modern British artists, including David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein, Josef Herman, Bernard Meninsky, Morris Kestelman, Alfred Wolmark, Jacob Kramer and the contemporary figurative artists Breuer-Weil and Lawson. John Iddon Fine Art will also show Modern British art from the 1930s to the present day, including distinguished Royal Academicians. Artists include: David Hockney, Donald Hamilton Fraser, Simon Palmer, Anne Swankie and Lucy Pratt, as well younger contemporary artists such as Melissa Scott-Miller.

Jewellery dealers participating for the first time include seventh generation dealer of fine antique jewellery, A Rakyan Collection, and Nigel Milne, who specialises in fine quality period and contemporary jewellery.

Four dealers are returning to participate in the LAPADA Fair. The first is second generation antique business William Cook, who deals in fine quality furniture and works of art. Next is Jonathan Cooper a specialist dealer in contemporary paintings and sculpture, as well as Titus Omega who deals in Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Arts & Crafts antiques. Finally is Brain Watson Antique Glass, who deals in antique glass for collectors and those who like to use glass from the past.


 
 
 
 



2016-06-27

8019 - University of Minnesota Press publishes "René Magritte: Selected Writings"

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Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection of René Magritte’s writings gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of the renowned Belgian painter—the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist—in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos, and much more, a new Magritte emerges: part Surrealist, part literalist, part celebrity, part rascal.

While this book is sure to appeal to admirers of Magritte’s art and those who are curious about his personal life, there is also much to delight readers interested in the history and theory of art, philosophy and politics, as well as lovers of creativity and the inner workings of a probing, inquisitive mind unrestricted by genre, medium or fashion.

René Magritte (1898–1967) was an internationally renowned Belgian Surrealist painter who also wrote prolifically on art and other subjects.

Jo Levy was a British translator whose translations include Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Ghosts in the Mirror, Hélène Cixous’s Angst, Louis Aragon’s The Libertine, and Arthur Adamov’s Man and Child.

Kathleen Rooney is senior lecturer of English and creative writing at DePaul University. She is the author of eight books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and criticism.

Eric Plattner is an adjunct professor of writing, rhetoric, and discourse at DePaul University


 
 
 
 

2016-06-24

8018 - Smithsonian intends to create permanent exhibition space in London with the Victoria and Albert Museum

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The project would mark the first time in its 170-year history that the Smithsonian has committed to a long-term permanent gallery presence in another country.

The Smithsonian and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) announced plans to work together to create a major new international collaboration. The institutions have agreed to develop, over the course of this year, a plan for a jointly organized permanent gallery space as a key part of V&A East, and together will form an important component of a new cultural complex being created in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, the site of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The project would mark the first time in its 170-year history that the Smithsonian has committed to a long-term permanent gallery presence in another country, as well as a program of temporary exhibitions and displays.

“Through a collaboration with one of the world’s great museums, we will be able to inspire and educate more people than ever before,” said Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton. “With the V&A in London, we can build bridges to other countries and continents and share our work with the world.”

Exhibitions and related programming for the space will be developed jointly by the Smithsonian and the V&A, with the goal of staging Smithsonian exhibitions as part of the V&A East’s overall program. Although planning is in its earliest stages, Skorton expects the permanent gallery space will have broad global significance and draw from both organizations’ collections and expertise in science and the arts and humanities and where they intersect.

“This would not be a ‘Smithsonian outpost in London,’” Skorton said. “It would be a collaboration with the V&A, giving both of us opportunities to engage with diverse audiences in innovative ways. What we learn through this collaboration will enable us to better tell our stories not only in London, but in the United States and around the world.”

“Working very closely with the Smithsonian, as well as the other partners in and around the Olympic Park, is one of the key reasons the V&A is committed to developing a new museum, and this proposed collaboration represents an exciting opportunity for us to explore the synergies between two world-class institutions and their collections and knowledge,” said V&A Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer Tim Reeve.

The announcement today is the product of an initiative that began in January 2015 between the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which is overseeing the development of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and the Smithsonian and the V&A.

“We appreciate the LLDC’s original invitation to participate in this forward-thinking initiative and the V&A for helping to make our participation a reality,” said Al Horvath, the Smithsonian’s Under Secretary for Finance and Administration, who has led the project for the Smithsonian. “We are extremely grateful to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan for continuing the city’s commitment to the East London project and to former Mayor Boris Johnson for his steadfast support.”

“Growing London’s cultural sector is one of my core priorities as mayor, so I welcome this trans-Atlantic collaboration between two of the world’s most prestigious institutions,” said Khan. “These plans would create an exciting new cultural destination in East London, which will help many more people enjoy the extraordinary collections managed by the Smithsonian and the V&A. It is great news for everyone who wants to see London’s cultural and creative sectors even bigger and better.”

The Smithsonian exhibits and programs will be supported by contributions from the private sector, with the help of Foundation for FutureLondon, a new charity established for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which coordinates fundraising for the overall project. Other partners at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are Sadler’s Wells, University College London and London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. LLDC expects the facilities to open in 2021.

“We are delighted to have helped bring this world-leading partnership together, and we look forward to working closely with both institutions as the project moves forward,” said Foundation for FutureLondon Director Andrea Stark.

 
 
 
 
 

2016-06-23

8017 - Quai Branly celebrates ten years with homage to Jacques Chirac

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Jacques Chirac's ambitious museum, partly hidden inside a garden, opened in June 2006. © Musée du quai Branly, photo: Roland Halbe

Controversial ethnographic museum was a grand project of the former French president

The Musée du Quai Branly, Paris’s museum of non-Western arts and civilisations, celebrates its tenth anniversary this month. To mark the occasion, the museum has organised an exhibition opening today on the former French president Jacques Chirac, who was the driving force behind this ambitious institution on the south bank of the Seine (Jacques Chirac and the Dialogue of Cultures,  until 9 October). Chirac, who has a personal interest in Japanese and Pre-Columbian art, was deeply committed to establishing what has become the world’s greatest museum of non-Western art.

Origin story
Chirac’s grand plan was to bring together two Parisian collections: those of the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et Océanie and the ethnographic section of the Musée de l’Homme. The highlights include African masks, Peruvian pottery figures and Asian textiles. At the time, some criticised the decision to take work from existing institutions to build a new one. But Steven Engelsman, the director of Vienna’s Weltmuseum, says that the Quai Branly has “worked miracles to increase the public appreciation of ethnographic collections and museums”.

The museum has held 97 shows—almost ten a year. Its ambitious exhibition programme focuses on specific non-Western cultures (such as Matahoata: Arts and Society in the Marquesas Islands, until 24 July) and cross-cultural themes (such as Persona, Strangely Human, until 13 November).  

Looking to the future, the museum’s founding president, Stéphane Martin, feels that more emphasis should be placed on the permanent collection, which occupies just 60% of its display space, and slightly less on exhibitions. There could well be a redisplay during the coming decade to present the collection in a fresh way.


Spotlight on the display
Since the museum opened in 2006, the installation of its collection has been controversial. The objects are under spotlights in a darkened gallery, raising questions about whether they should be regarded as works of art or ethnography. The impact is certainly dramatic, but many visitors end up understanding little about the cultures that created these objects.

Moving forward, the Quai Branly must also consider how to deal with acquisitions. Nicholas Thomas, the director of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (and a member of the Quai Branly’s council), believes that the Parisian museum should put more resources into collecting contemporary art. “How to renew collections, and create collections for the future, is among the greatest challenges for museums of ethnography,” he says.

Despite the controversies, the museum’s global ambition is even more important today than it was a decade ago. As Martin explains: “In these troubled times, the Musée du Quai Branly must remain, more than ever, a place of dialogue and openness to others.”


Inside the Museum du Quai Branly
The collection of the Quai Branly comprises around 300,000 items (plus photographs and documents), many of them from former French colonial territories. At the heart of the Jean Nouvel-designed building is a 200m-long gallery, raised above the ground on huge stilts. This meandering structure houses 3,500 objects from the permanent collection, with sections on Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The museum attracted 1.3 million visitors last year, making it the fourth most popular in Paris; 83% of its visitors are French, a high proportion for a major museum in a tourist capital. Most of its budget (a total of more than €50m a year) comes from the government.

 
 
 
 
 

2016-06-22

8016 - ArtAttack: The new app that lets collectors share, sell and network

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This month sees the launch of ArtAttack, the first social networking app designed exclusively for the art world. ArtAttack connects a global network of art lovers and professionals with its user-friendly interface and intuitive design – an Instagram with a ‘buy’ button.

Whereas most online art platforms are currently limited to a more traditional marketplace format of direct buying and selling, ArtAttack engages its users – whether artists, galleries, or collectors – with the social aspects of the art world. Users can discover, follow, and personally interact with both emerging and established artists through comments, likes and reposts. Artists are not limited to posting finished works, but can also share works in progress, images of their studios and of their inspirations. An ‘artist’s diary’ of sorts, ArtAttack gives followers an insight into the artist’s world.

It is this level of social engagement that makes ArtAttack unique in the ever-growing art and tech market. Collectors can use the app to curate their dream collection by posting artworks they find and love on the app, or in real life, to their profiles. They can discover and follow emerging artists and galleries – an exciting way to track an artist’s journey from the beginning of their career. Galleries can use ArtAttack to discover global emerging talent, to connect with a greater network of collectors, and to grow their online presence. Users ultimately curate their own feed and in doing so customise their ArtAttack experience in accordance with their own tastes and preferences. Furthermore, the Curated Art page showcases selected artists and galleries, giving users access to great content and entire exhibitions online.

For all users of ArtAttack, buying and selling is optional. Yet with three easy taps, a work by the latest up-and-coming art star can be yours. ArtAttack uses Braintree – a subsidiary of PayPal that specialises in mobile and web payment systems – for a fully secure and guaranteed buying process.

Indeed, frustrated with the difficulty of navigating other art apps, creating something simple, sleek, and ultra intuitive was one of the founding concepts of ArtAttack. Says the app’s co-founder, India Irving: ‘What I’ve enjoyed most in this process has been speaking with artists and implementing their ideas into our user interface and user experience. It’s thrilling because I know we are creating a platform “for artists by artists,” giving them the features they want and need.’

The ease of use and facility of the app speaks to a new generation of digitally savvy artists and collectors, and is set to become the social hub for the emerging art market.


 
 
 
 

2016-06-21

8015 - Depressed silver market is due an upturn says world's largest art and auction tracker

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Ignaz Josef Wurth, The Sachsen-Teschen tureen. Sold for £447,000 at Bonhams
 
Currently there is one segment of the huge $63.8 billion international market in art and antiques that is seriously depressed and which is due an inevitable correction – antique silver.

So now is a good time to buy antique silver objects, candelabra, dinnerware, snuff boxes, any kind of beautiful ornamental silver. “It’s a bargain at current prices,” says Pontus Silfvertoolpe, co-founder of Barnebys.

One of the greatest merits of Barnebys massive art and antiques database is its ability to track the values of the commodities it covers – art, antiques, wine, cars – some dozens of specialist collectable items.

Barnebys is the worlds largest and fastest growing art and antique search engine and covers 1,600 auction houses internationally, from the best known names in the business – Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips - to the local auction house near you.

As a result the company is constantly being asked what is hot and what is not, what is up and what is down in art and auctions sales. If you want to invest in art and antiques what should one be looking at?

From being one of the safest investments, something that always found a ready market, antique silver today is many times cheaper than its smelting value as ingots of silver. In the past, one’s fortune was often counted in silver, one of the oldest precious metals known. For most people it was their silver spoons that were the future pension, and a pair of well-polished candelabra from any of the great masters could be exchanged for a whole building in central London. Silver was therefore the first thing that was hidden or buried when the enemy attacked. Sadly this is not the case anymore.

This has had a terrible effect on beautiful antique silverware, much of it is being melted down and turned into silver bullion instead of existing as lovely antique and well functioning coffee pots, napkin rings, elaborate bread baskets, candelabra or other ornamental objects which used to grace the tables of the rich and famous.

A fine Georgian coffee pot in the 1980's would have sold for £1,500; today you can pick them up for £ 800 to £1,000. This poses the question, has antique silver become worthless?

The answer is no! The situation is not absolutely hopeless. There is a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to antique silver and silver’s existence as beautiful objects. The generally prevailing trend in the secondary market is that quality still counts, regardless of category, materials or age. And this is true of silver. The best of the best continues to hold its value.

What people are particularly looking for today is the unusual object with provenance. For example a magnificent highly decorated soup tureen once owned by the sister of Queen Marie Antoinette, estimated to sell for £100,000 to £200,000 in fact sold for a staggering £447,000 at Bonhams.

Items in silver that are still sought after include wine coolers and wine strainers. These reach high prices in the collector communities, a non-price-sensitive audience around the world which certainly knows how to use them. Decorative silver is enjoying a renaissance when it finds an educated market from the US to China and the Middle East – particularly pieces in the Art Nouveau style.

So for those who are not impatient and have the time to wait, prices will probably rise within a few years. And for lovers of antique silver the bonus is that it can hardly be cheaper than it is today. And while this trend will in all likelihood continue down a bit further, it will recover and deliver a good return on your investment.

It is now time for new generations to start using silver again, to understand and appreciate the value of quality and durability and the intrinsic beauty of this ancient and much valued precious metal.

Because most silver works are currently melted down for their scrap value, we will see a higher interest and much higher prices for those items that survive the current smelting madness. Supply and demand will as ever have a rectifying effect.

So Barnebys would advise you to join us online and see who is holding serious silver auctions. There are bargains to be had out there that are both stunningly beautiful works of art and also quite often very functional as dinner services or as decorative objects with intriguing histories. Given that silver prices will doubtless rise again its investment value is another reason to buy silver.

 
 
 
 

2016-06-20

8014 - Google Arts & Culture

 
 
 
Explore collections from around the world with Google Arts & Culture, created by Google Cultural Institute.
 
Discover artworks, collections and stories from all around the world like never before.
Explore cultural treasures in extraordinary detail and easily share with your friends.
 
 
Explore

Discover millions of artworks, historical sites and stories

 
 
 
 
 

2016-06-17

8013 - The travelling 'Meet Vincent van Gogh' Experience world premiere launches in Beijing

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The world renowned Van Gogh Museum and the co-founding partner Artcomm present the travelling Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience. Currently on view in Beijing, where the Experience saw its global launch on June 15th 2016, Meet Vincent van Gogh will be toured to various cities across Greater China, including Macau and Shanghai, over the next five years by the sole Chinese licensee and local promoter Wai Chun Culture.

Meet Vincent van Gogh is the first and only official Van Gogh experience created by the experts at the Van Gogh Museum. Because of the vulnerable nature of the museum collection, many paintings by the famous Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) rarely leave the museum’s walls and some never even travel. In response to the continuously growing interest in Van Gogh, Meet Vincent van Gogh uses the latest technology to bring to life the great artist in an innovative way and to ensure that his work and life are accessible to as many people as possible.

“Vincent van Gogh is one of the most celebrated artists in the world and has been in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people since primary school. We are very proud to present the first Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience to families across China and hope that this high-quality edutainment passes on the inspiring story of Van Gogh to current and future generations,” says Axel Rüger, Director of the Van Gogh Museum.

Though millions are familiar with Van Gogh, the Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience refutes misconceptions and reveals the little-known complexities about the artist’s personality and artistic practice. Guided by quotations from over 800 personal letters, family photographs, lifelike Relievo reproductions and spectacular audiovisual scenes from Van Gogh’s artworks, life and context in which he developed into the influential artist that he was, visitors embark on a journey through the most important moments of Van Gogh’s life, beautifully rendered to simulate the world as he saw it. Through the words of Vincent himself, his brother Theo, his sister in law Jo Bonger and other key persons, Meet Vincent van Gogh provides intimate insights into the artist’s brilliant mind and troubled psyche, while its multisensory interactive environment allows visitors to discover piece by piece the man behind the great art.

Meet Vincent van Gogh tells the story of Van Gogh’s life through six comprehensive chapters, exploring his early life, him as an emerging artist in the Netherlands, Antwerp and Paris, his time in Arles in the South of France, the period of his illness and last but not least, the artist’s astonishing legacy and relevance more than 125 years after his death. Van Gogh’s various paintings and working spaces are accurately reproduced, allowing each visitor to touch the artist’s brushstrokes, actively interact with his creative environment and even try their hand at drawing using his tools. Moreover, the visitors are allowed to literally enter Van Gogh’s paintings, smell the straw in The Harvest and sit on the artist’s bed in The Bedroom. The final chapter in the Experience creates a comprehensive view of Van Gogh’s visionary practice with an interactive wall presenting hundreds of his works from collections around the world, while vi sualizations of works by his contemporaries and followers, such as artists Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Mondriaan, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney and Francis Bacon, as well as various writers, filmmakers and designers, demonstrate the profound and widespread influence Van Gogh has had and will continue to have on cultures around the world.

Meet Vincent van Gogh was developed with the profound knowledge of the experts of the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), the co-founding partner ArtComm (specialized in traveling presentations and exhibitions worldwide), and the artist’s great-grandnephew, Willem van Gogh. This event is jointly organized by the Van Gogh Museum and Wai Chun Culture (local promoter and sole licensee of Meet Vincent van Gogh in China). Over the next five years, Wai Chun Culture will bring two sets of the Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience to various cities in Greater China, including Macau and Shanghai. Other locations will be announced soon.


 
 
 
 

2016-06-16

8012 - Manifesta: European Biennail of contemporary art opens eleventh edition in Zurich - 11.06.2015-18.09.2016

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Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, is a migratory biennial which aims to reflect critically on Europe‘s changing cultural DNA. The eleventh edition of Manifesta, located in Zurich and titled What People Do for Money: Some Joint Ventures, has been curated by German artist Christian Jankowski. Manifesta 11 is composed of various parts: the 30 new projects in the satellites as well as in Löwenbräukunst and Helmhaus, which are the result of encounters between artists and their ‘hosts‘ (people from different professional fields); The Historical Exhibition: Sites Under Construction, also in the art institutions; the Pavillon of Reflections, where the entire project will be reflected in a filmic form; and Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, a stage for joint-venture performances and home of the newly founded artists‘ guild.

The host city Zurich offers the necessary points of friction for Manifesta to explore current issues facing modern Europe in a specifically urban context – just as it is said in its mission statement. Although the city on the Limmat river is not, like many of its predecessors, on Europe’s periphery, this leading European and international financial and business hub is located in a country which, with its isolationist policies, represents a political island, in the core of Europe – of all places, at a vital interface between North, South East and West.

But what exactly are the characteristics of a city society marked by these parameters? It is exactly here that Christian Jankowski’s artistic-curatorial concept begins its approach. It addresses the various professional groups in Zurich and facilitates encounters and collaborations (Joint Ventures) between artists and these occupations. 30 international artists were invited to embark on a process-like dialogue with their chosen professions. The historical department presents works by both classic and contemporary artists that reflect the development of work in the mirror of art. In the Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, the traditional idea of the guild is rejuvenated by the foundation of a new guild, the guild of artists, with membership and hence admission extended only to those who can articulate themselves artistically as part of a performance. And the Pavillon of Reflections is not only a hedonistic open air swimming area in the proud in outdoor Badis in Zurich, or public baths, it is also a stage, a platform, on which the whole process is reflected and “processed” cinematically.

The subject of work remains especially relevant in Zurich to this day. In accordance with the Protestant work ethic, pursuing a vocation became a religious obligation around the beginning of the modern era and thus an identity-building force – especially in a Switzerland reformed by Zwingli and Calvin. Even today, “guilds” still in existence continue to confirm professional life as the basic structure of urban life – the annual spring festival of Sechseläuten (when the clock strikes six) is a ritual that celebrates the working day every year. The guilds thus mark the crucial interface at which people’s individual identification with their profession, the internalization of their vocation, meets the social view from outside on specific occupational groupings, also known as status – and the simple act of earning money becomes a higher calling.

Hence, in the context of Manifesta in Zurich, questions about the current meaning and the future of work automatically arose.

What does the work of today and tomorrow look like, when a modern working world devotes itself to new working methods involving independence and self-determination, the creative economy and other precarious ways of working – and at the same time, turns exploitation of others into the exploitation of the self?

What if work – in the throes of the fourth industrial revolution – itself becomes a thing of the past? Currently, the phenomena of digitisation and automation suggest a new, flourishing freedom of the individual but in reality, they have long since been engineering its substitute. Although still regarded as a service-oriented prosthetic of humanity, the machine or the computer has long since become the better half of the human (brain). Already, robots drive cars, serve in restaurants or play with children. But what form is appropriate for an automated society, in which people can no longer define their value, identity and status through work, can no longer barter with other people via the money they earn through work, can no longer invest the resources of their intellectual and physical abilities or can no longer allot the appropriate amounts of time using organisational software or time clocks? One question that is currently a burning issue in Switzerland, went to a vote here on 5 June – just before the opening of Manifesta 11 – an unconditional minimum income for citizens – whether they work or not.

What role can work continue to have for each individual, when, just as they earn money, the macrocosm of national and global business and the microcosm of the single household become enmeshed, penetrate each other, even, and through the expenditure of time and resources as a monetary performance, put simply, the earning of money, ultimately becomes a decisive (power) factor – in the relationship between genders and the relationship between generations.

How can a city even function if the balance of work and service is out of kilter? For the human being does not just perform work, he or she also creates it. Thus, the modern urban society of the Swiss financial metropolis has developed into a perfect maintenance and disposal society which eliminates whatever could contaminate human interaction in the most professional manner possible. Excess becomes a daily phenomenon, excess becomes waste – and is discreetly removed. From annoying faecal matter, through the dangers of fire and violence and bodily fragility caused by disease, pain, and deth to the excessive libido. It is no coincidence that many of the artists chose to address professions that tackle exactly these issues.

And what do these current developments in working life mean for art itself – in an art world increasingly marked by mercantile necessities and trends toward professionalization? The artist’s profession has always belonged to the more eccentric callings in the spectrum of possible occupations, yet it seems to remain connected to the notion of individual labour and handcraft – the term of ‘the artwork’ as work, laboured as it is, clearly demonstrates this. (KL)


 
 
 
 

2016-06-15

8011 - Minneapolis Institute of Art unveils innovative new digital initiatives to personalize visitor experience

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Journeys is a mobile app designed to facilitate a custom tour through the museum that can be created, shared and followed.
 
The Minneapolis Institute of Art  unveiled a series of new digital initiatives designed to augment and personalize visitors’ experiences within and beyond the museum’s galleries. From innovative mobile apps that facilitate a customized journey through the museum, to in-depth multimedia explorations of Mia’s treasured artworks, as well as new features on the museum’s website, these new digital platforms will enable visitors to more deeply engage with Mia’s collection and create shared art experiences in unprecedented ways.

“At Mia, we’re always looking for ways to incorporate the latest technologies to create a more meaningful and dynamic visitor experience,” said Douglas Hegley, Mia’s Director of Media & Technology. “In the past several years, as digital platforms have continued to grow and evolve at an incredible rate, museums are taking advantage of the many opportunities to better connect with their audiences. With these new digital platforms at Mia, we’re poised to make that connection even stronger—and we are committed to delighting our audiences by fostering a unique art experience that enables engagement on a deeper, more personal level.”

Journeys is a mobile app designed to facilitate a custom tour through the museum that can be created, shared and followed. Users can search the collection, identify and save a selection of artworks for later reference, and introduce a theme that connects objects with each other by artist, time period, location, genre, medium, or subject matter. The app then identifies and maps the relevant works within the museum; as visitors curate their trip through the collection, the app encourages new discoveries and leads viewers to works they might not have found on their own. Designed by the Minneapolis office of Sapient Nitro, Journeys has already received several design awards: Gold and four Silvers in Minnesota and Gold in Region 8.

Overheard is an innovative, site-specific, narrative audio experience inspired by conversations overheard in museums. Using a mobile app that responds to peoples’ movement through the museum, visitors are able to eavesdrop on the comments of fictional museum-goers as they experience and discuss the works of art on view throughout the galleries. Developed by creative technology studio Team Luxloop—awarded Mia’s inaugural 3M Art and Technology Prize in 2015 to implement the project—Overheard includes adaptations of snippets of real conversation overheard by Mia’s visitors and staff, which have been gathered through a hotline for submissions, and each narrative is tailored to a museum location and the moment. Through the observations of these fictional Mia visitors, the app seeks to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the works of art on display, make art historical narratives more accessible, and equally encourage personal reflection and conversation among listeners. The app will be available for iOS on June 9. Year two of the 3M Art and Technology competition coming up – entries can be submitted from June 9 through July 31, 2016.

My Mia is a new feature on the museum’s website that allows members to create a customized digital dashboard that offers access to a personal profile page, giving history, activity log and content tailored to their interests. Users can log in to receive advance museum news, member rewards, discounts on tickets and store purchases, and opportunities to support the Minneapolis art community. The My Mia section of the website will expand and improve over time as more and more people use it to engage with the museum.

ArtStories is the museum’s digital storytelling platform. Mia has published nearly 100 engaging, multimedia stories crafted to delight audiences and encourage deeper experiences of the museum’s encyclopedic collection. ArtStories offers online, smartphone and tablet access to in-depth explorations of Mia’s collection highlights and hidden gems—including intriguing details and secret backstories. The recent reinstallation of the museum’s Japanese and Korean galleries has spurred a new phase of ArtStories, introducing additional themes and approaches to understanding Mia’s permanent collection.
 
 
 
 
 
 

2016-06-14

8010 - Fourth edition of the Portrait(s) Photography Festival in Vichy

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Every summer, Vichy becomes one with the art it hosts at the Portrait(s) Photography Festival, held in a variety of locations in the city. This year is the fourth anniversary of the festival, which runs from 10 June to 4 September. For an entire season the city resumes its place at the leading edge of contemporary photography, offering the public striking yet accessible exhibitions, all centred exclusively on the art of the portrait.

The festival celebrates portraits of all kinds, whether based in the documentary tradition or in pure fiction, intimacy or more conceptual schemes. Drawing from the work of both established figures and younger artists, it brings together celebrity portraits and the faces of the unknown, offering a voyage along which a multiplicity of different ways of seeing and being seen emerge, with the aim of bringing the public to discover or rediscover the portrait in its most classical and most disconcerting forms. For the third year running, Vichy has also reconfirmed its commitment to contemporary photography by offering a photographer a stay in the city. This year the artist in residence has been Sweden’s Anton Renborg, who, pacing the city streets by day and night, in both fair weather and foul, has developed a fascination with the special atmosphere of the places in it.

This year, Portrait(s) presents eleven artists, exhibitions of whose work are being held simultaneously in the open, in the city centre and the outskirts. The galleries of the Centre Culturel Valery-Larbaud, which was built at the beginning of the last century, feature work by Jean Depara, Nicolas Comment, Hellen van Meene, Nicola Lo Calzo, Maï Lucas, Ruud van Empel and Jean-Christian Bourcart.

Jean Depara was one of the most visible photographers in Kinshasa back in the 1950s. When not snapping portraits of Kinshasa beauties in his studio, which he called the “Jean Whisky Depara”, he worked in bars and nightclubs, where young night owls brought a high-rolling, seductive charm to Depara’s photographs. For six years now, Nicolas Comment has been assembling a photographic blason of the body of his lover and muse Milo, who appears and disappears in the folds of a love forever new. Hellen van Meene has for many years been making portraits of adolescents in which she gracefully choreographs their sometimes apprehensive and melancholy looks and gestures. Nicola Lo Calzo has been exploring post-colonial memories on different continents for some five years. Following projects that took him to Africa, the Caribbean and Louisiana, the angle he is exhibiting at Vichy is Cuba. For over twenty years, Maï Lucas has been documenting American street culture. A fine observer of clothing styles and displays, she fixes her eye on the fashion details - an Afro hairdo, a mauve wig, a stripy strapless bra - that make a figure unique. Ruud van Empel recreates images of a verdant Eden peopled with individuals, most often children, with stares as fixed as totem poles. His photographs, the result of lengthy digital retouching, are composed like timeless pictures. Working together with graphic artist Ben Salesse, Jean-Christian Bourcart has created a stunning work based on Farm Security Administration photographs taken in the United States during the Great Depression. Bourcart has managed to obtain a number of rejects, prints recognizable from the stamps that mutilated them, and has set them side by side with quotations from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Paola de Pietri takes portraits of mothers carrying their babies, against empty backgrounds they bring back to life simply through their stubbornness to live and to give life, thereby renewing the dynamic of generations in an environment that for its part seems to be frozen.

The photographs of Vichy and its people exhibited this year are by Anton Renborg, as commissioned by the city. Pacing the city streets by day and night, Renborg developed a fascination with the special atmosphere of its places. Through these calm, equivocal images, he creates a portrait of a health resort rich with history, a worldly place, a place of display that is also a shadow theatre where destinies play out as if in a movie by Claude Chabrol.

On the Esplanade and Park “Des Ailes”, walkers-by will find portraits by Jean-Marie Périer, the proverbial eye of the 60s and 70s, the years that saw the birth of a new generation of pop singers. Here stars like Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Eddy Mitchell, Françoise Hardy, the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan stage a tremendous comeback, bringing a mythic period back to life all along the riverside.


 
 
 
 

2016-06-13

8009 - Manifesta: European Biennail of contemporary art opens eleventh edition in Zurich - 11.06.2016-18.09.2016

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German artist Alexandra Holownia aka "Alexandra Fly" visits an exhibition during the preview of Manifesta 11, the roving European Biennail of contemporary art, on June 10, 2016 in Zurich. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP.
 
Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, is a migratory biennial which aims to reflect critically on Europe‘s changing cultural DNA. The eleventh edition of Manifesta, located in Zurich and titled What People Do for Money: Some Joint Ventures, has been curated by German artist Christian Jankowski. Manifesta 11 is composed of various parts: the 30 new projects in the satellites as well as in Löwenbräukunst and Helmhaus, which are the result of encounters between artists and their ‘hosts‘ (people from different professional fields); The Historical Exhibition: Sites Under Construction, also in the art institutions; the Pavillon of Reflections, where the entire project will be reflected in a filmic form; and Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, a stage for joint-venture performances and home of the newly founded artists‘ guild.

The host city Zurich offers the necessary points of friction for Manifesta to explore current issues facing modern Europe in a specifically urban context – just as it is said in its mission statement. Although the city on the Limmat river is not, like many of its predecessors, on Europe’s periphery, this leading European and international financial and business hub is located in a country which, with its isolationist policies, represents a political island, in the core of Europe – of all places, at a vital interface between North, South East and West.

But what exactly are the characteristics of a city society marked by these parameters? It is exactly here that Christian Jankowski’s artistic-curatorial concept begins its approach. It addresses the various professional groups in Zurich and facilitates encounters and collaborations (Joint Ventures) between artists and these occupations. 30 international artists were invited to embark on a process-like dialogue with their chosen professions. The historical department presents works by both classic and contemporary artists that reflect the development of work in the mirror of art. In the Cabaret der Künstler – Zunfthaus Voltaire, the traditional idea of the guild is rejuvenated by the foundation of a new guild, the guild of artists, with membership and hence admission extended only to those who can articulate themselves artistically as part of a performance. And the Pavillon of Reflections is not only a hedonistic open air swimming area in the proud in outdoor Badis in Zurich, or public baths, it is also a stage, a platform, on which the whole process is reflected and “processed” cinematically.

The subject of work remains especially relevant in Zurich to this day. In accordance with the Protestant work ethic, pursuing a vocation became a religious obligation around the beginning of the modern era and thus an identity-building force – especially in a Switzerland reformed by Zwingli and Calvin. Even today, “guilds” still in existence continue to confirm professional life as the basic structure of urban life – the annual spring festival of Sechseläuten (when the clock strikes six) is a ritual that celebrates the working day every year. The guilds thus mark the crucial interface at which people’s individual identification with their profession, the internalization of their vocation, meets the social view from outside on specific occupational groupings, also known as status – and the simple act of earning money becomes a higher calling.

Hence, in the context of Manifesta in Zurich, questions about the current meaning and the future of work automatically arose.

What does the work of today and tomorrow look like, when a modern working world devotes itself to new working methods involving independence and self-determination, the creative economy and other precarious ways of working – and at the same time, turns exploitation of others into the exploitation of the self?

What if work – in the throes of the fourth industrial revolution – itself becomes a thing of the past? Currently, the phenomena of digitisation and automation suggest a new, flourishing freedom of the individual but in reality, they have long since been engineering its substitute. Although still regarded as a service-oriented prosthetic of humanity, the machine or the computer has long since become the better half of the human (brain). Already, robots drive cars, serve in restaurants or play with children. But what form is appropriate for an automated society, in which people can no longer define their value, identity and status through work, can no longer barter with other people via the money they earn through work, can no longer invest the resources of their intellectual and physical abilities or can no longer allot the appropriate amounts of time using organisational software or time clocks? One question that is currently a burning issue in Switzerland, went to a vote here on 5 June – just before the opening of Manifesta 11 – an unconditional minimum income for citizens – whether they work or not.

What role can work continue to have for each individual, when, just as they earn money, the macrocosm of national and global business and the microcosm of the single household become enmeshed, penetrate each other, even, and through the expenditure of time and resources as a monetary performance, put simply, the earning of money, ultimately becomes a decisive (power) factor – in the relationship between genders and the relationship between generations.

How can a city even function if the balance of work and service is out of kilter? For the human being does not just perform work, he or she also creates it. Thus, the modern urban society of the Swiss financial metropolis has developed into a perfect maintenance and disposal society which eliminates whatever could contaminate human interaction in the most professional manner possible. Excess becomes a daily phenomenon, excess becomes waste – and is discreetly removed. From annoying faecal matter, through the dangers of fire and violence and bodily fragility caused by disease, pain, and deth to the excessive libido. It is no coincidence that many of the artists chose to address professions that tackle exactly these issues.

And what do these current developments in working life mean for art itself – in an art world increasingly marked by mercantile necessities and trends toward professionalization? The artist’s profession has always belonged to the more eccentric callings in the spectrum of possible occupations, yet it seems to remain connected to the notion of individual labour and handcraft – the term of ‘the artwork’ as work, laboured as it is, clearly demonstrates this. (KL)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

2016-06-10

8008 - Summer houses join the pavilion as Serpentine Architecture Programme expands

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A visitor walks past a newly installed Serpentine gallery summer house designed by German architect Barkow Leibinger on June 7, 2016 in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP / AFP.

The Serpentine revealed the projects for its expanded Architecture Programme for 2016: the 16th annual Pavilion designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) (Copenhagen/New York) and four newly commissioned Summer Houses by Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ (Amsterdam/Lagos), Barkow Leibinger (Berlin/New York), Yona Friedman (Paris) and Asif Khan (London). The Summer Houses are inspired by Queen Caroline’s Temple, a classical style summer house built in 1734 and a stone’s throw from the Serpentine Gallery.

Introducing contemporary architecture to a wider audience, the Serpentine Architecture Programme presents a unique exhibition of contemporary international architecture in the built form, rather than through an exhibition of models, drawings and plans. Each of the five architects, aged between 36 and 93, have not completed a permanent structure in the UK.

The Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is an ‘unzipped wall’ that is transformed from straight line to three-dimensional space, creating a dramatic structure that by day houses a café and free family activities and by night becomes a space for the Serpentine’s acclaimed Park Nights programme of performative works by artists, writers and musicians. Kunlé Adeyemi’s Summer House is an inverse replica of Queen Caroline’s Temple - a tribute to its robust form, space and material, recomposed into a new sculptural object. Barkow Leibinger were inspired by another, now extinct, 18th Century pavilion also designed by William Kent, which rotated and offered 360 degree views of the Park. Yona Friedman’s Summer House takes the form of a modular structure that can be assembled and disassembled in different formations and builds upon the architect’s pioneering project La Ville Spatiale (Spatial City) begun in the late 1950s. Asif Khan’s design is inspired by the fact that Queen Caroline’s Temple was positioned in a way that it would allow it to catch the sunlight from The Serpentine lake.

Serpentine Pavilion 2016 Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
Architect’s Statement
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)
For the Serpentine Pavilion 2016, we have attempted to design a structure that embodies multiple aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is free-form yet rigorous, modular yet sculptural, both transparent and opaque, both solid box and blob. We decided to work with one of the most basic elements of architecture: the brick wall. Rather than clay bricks or stone blocks, the wall is erected from pultruded fibreglass frames stacked on top of each other. The wall is then pulled apart to form a cavity within it, to house the events of the Pavilion’s programme. This unzipping of the wall turns the line into a surface, transforming the wall into a space. A complex three-dimensional environment is created which can be explored and experienced in a variety of ways, inside and outside. At the top, the wall appears like a straight line, while the bottom, it forms a sheltered valley at the entrance of the Pavilion and an undulating hillside towards the Park.

Serpentine Summer Houses 2016
Architect’s Statement
Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ
With a play on architecture, our design aims to fulfil the simple primary purpose of a Summer House: a space for shelter and relaxation. The design is based on projecting an inverse replica of the historic Queen Caroline’s Temple – a tribute to its robust form, space and material, recomposed into a new architectural language. By rotating the Temple’s interior space, we expose the structure’s neo-classical plan, proportions and form. Using prefabricated building blocks assembled from rough sandstone similar to those used in building the Temple, in contrast with a soft interior finish, our composition generates basic elements of architecture - a room, a doorway and a window - for people to interact with the building, the environment and with one another. The carved out void, homely interior and fragmented furniture blocks create comfortable spaces for people to eat, rest or play – in and around the house - all through summer.

Architect’s Statement
Barkow Leibinger
Queen Caroline’s Temple, an 18th Century historical summer house attributed to William Kent and situated in proximity to the Serpentine Gallery, stands – seemingly without purpose – facing a large meadow. A second Pavilion, today extinct, also designed by Kent was situated on a nearby man-made mountain constructed from the dredging of the artificial The Long Water. This small pavilion rotated mechanically 360 degrees at the top of the hill, offering various panoramic views of the Park and, reciprocally, different views of itself when seen from the Park. It was meant both to be visible in the Park and a structure from which to survey its surroundings. The little mountain and house disappeared at some point in history. With this absent structure in mind, we have designed a Summer House in-the-round. Standing free with all its sides visible, and conceived as a series of undulating structural bands, it is reminiscent of a blind contour drawing (a drawing executed without lifting the pencil up from the paper and only looking at the subject). The logic of generating a structure from loops is a self-generating one and comes from the idea of coiling material in your hands then stacking the coils upon each other. The horizontal banding recalls the layered coursing of Queen Caroline’s Temple, despite its idiosyncratic nature.

Architect’s Statement
Yona Friedman
The proposed Summer House builds upon my project La Ville Spatiale (Spatial City) begun in the late 1950s. The manifesto for this project, published in 1959, was based on two pillars or principles: firstly, a mobile architecture that could create an elevated city space and enable the growth of cities while restraining the use of land; secondly, the use of modular structures to allow people to live in housing of their own design. The Serpentine Summer House is a ‘space-chain’ structure that constitutes a fragment of a larger grid structure, originally conceived for La Ville Spatiale. It is a modular structure that can be disassembled and assembled in different formations and compositions.

Architect’s Statement
Asif Khan
The Summer House takes a circular form where the circumference has been unpeeled to connect us and the Temple to a picturesque moment left hidden by William Kent almost 300 years ago. Through sun path analysis I realised that Kent aligned the temple toward the direction of the rising sun on 1st March 1683, Queen Caroline’s birthday. This effect would have been amplified by the reflection off the newly created Serpentine lake. We can imagine that The Serpentine lake itself may have been designed to amplify this annual moment, a landscape-sized mirror to reflect the sun, a possibility which John Rennie’s 1826 bridge obscures. In our Summer House a polished metal platform and roof provide an intimate experience of this lost moment for the visitor. Three ‘rooms’ of differing spatial quality gently enfilade together like those in the Temple. These are articulated by an undulating line of timber staves which create enclosure and direct views. The ground is a continuous gravel landscape punctuated by stepping stones, subtly elevating and measuring the visitor’s approach when entering the interior. As the structure meets the gravel it gently blends the horizontal and vertical, to appear as if the Summer House might have grown out of the ground. The project is designed to offer new experiences of the Park through dialogue with Queen Caroline’s Temple and the surrounding scenery.


 
 
 
 

2016-06-09

8007 - All Vincent Van Gogh's letters translated into Chinese by Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher

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The Chinese translation of Vincent van Gogh – The Letters. The Complete, Illustrated and Annotated Edition includes all 819 surviving letters written by Vincent van Gogh.
 
The Chinese translation of the complete correspondence of Vincent van Gogh is published today in Shanghai. The Chinese publisher of Vincent van Gogh – The Letters, Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher, organized a celebratory presentation.

In his speech, Axel Rüger (Director Van Gogh Museum) emphasized the importance of the letters as a source of knowledge for research into Van Gogh’s life and work and the art of his time. ‘A long-cherished wish of the Van Gogh Museum is fulfilled today: making Van Gogh’s complete correspondence accessible to Chinese readers. Van Gogh is a much-loved artist in China, and his life and work have inspired generations of Chinese people.’

The Chinese translation of Vincent van Gogh – The Letters. The Complete, Illustrated and Annotated Edition includes all 819 surviving letters written by Vincent van Gogh, mostly to his brother Theo, plus 83 letters sent to him by relatives and artist friends. In addition to the text of the letters and explanatory notes, the book reproduces the many sketches Van Gogh made in his letters. All the cited artworks on which Van Gogh was working or which he saw in museums or publications are also illustrated: over 4,300 in total.

Inspiration
The Chinese translation (Simplified Chinese) of Vincent van Gogh – The Letters is published by Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Huygens ING, and the Dutch Foundation for Literature, which also funded the translation. Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher is a leading producer of high-quality art books in China. Zhang Xiaomin (president Shanghai Fine Arts Publisher) comments: ‘Chinese readers all over the world can now share in this cultural and artistic heritage of outstanding international value.’ A team of translators headed by Professor Lin Xianghua spent five years working on the translation. The design is based on that of the original edition by Wim Crouwel. The publication will be available to Chinese buyers in two versions: a classic and a collector’s edition.

Rüger: ‘Van Gogh’s life and work have inspired generations of Chinese people. Now that his letters are accessible in Chinese, knowledge of Van Gogh as an innovative artist and talented letter-writer will become even deeper and more widespread.’

15 years of research
Vincent van Gogh – The Letters. The Complete, Illustrated and Annotated Edition (6 vols.) marked the culmination in 2009 of fifteen years of research by Leo Jansen, Hans Luijten and Nienke Bakker, the team responsible for the Van Gogh Letters Project. Alongside the printed edition, all the Van Gogh letters have also been published digitally in a complete, English-language scholarly web edition: www.vangoghletters.org. The web edition won the prestigious Europa Nostra Award (Grand Prix) in 2010. The Van Gogh Letters Project was a joint initiative of the Van Gogh Museum and Huygens ING (KNAW). Vincent van Gogh – The Letters was published in collaboration with Mercatorfonds publishers and has enjoyed great success in three international co-editions, in Dutch (Amsterdam University Press), English (Thames and Hudson) and French (Actes Sud).
 
 
 
 
 
 

2016-06-08

8006 - Olafur Eliasson is the Palace of Versailles' guest artist for the summer of 2016

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© Olafur Eliasson
 
The work of internationally acclaimed visual artist Olafur Eliasson (IS/DK, 1967) investigates perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. He is best known for striking installations such as the hugely popular The weather project (2003) in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, which was seen by more than two million people, and The New York City Waterfalls (2008), four large-scale artificial waterfalls which were installed on the shorelines of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Since 2008 the Palace of Versailles has put on a number of exhibitions dedicated to French or foreign artists, each one lasting a few months. Jeff Koons in 2008, Xavier Veilhan in 2009, Takashi Murakami in 2010, Bernar Venet in 2011, Joana Vasconcelos in 2012, Giuseppe Penone in 2013, Lee Ufan in 2014 and Anish Kapoor in 2015: these artists have all created a special dialogue between their works and the Palace and Gardens of Versailles.Since 2013 Alfred Pacquement is the curator of these exhibitions.

“With Olafur Eliasson, stars collide, the horizon slips away, and our perception blurs. The man who plays with light will make the contours of the Sun-King’s palace dance” says Catherine Pegard, President of the Château de Versailles.

“I am thrilled to be working with an iconic site like Versailles. As the palace and its gardens are so rich in history and meaning, in politics, dreams, and visions, it is an exciting challenge to create an artistic intervention that shifts visitors’ feeling of the place and offers a contemporary perspective on its strong tradition. I consider art to be a co-producer of reality, of our sense of now, society, and global togetherness. It is truly inspiring to have the opportunity to co-produce through art today’s perception of Versailles” explains Olifur Eliasson.
Biography

Over the years, Eliasson has had significant exhibitions in France, from Chaque matin je me sens différent, chaque soir je me sens le même (2002), at the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, to Contact (2014), the first solo exhibition at the newly built Fondation Louis Vuitton, where Eliasson also created the permanent installation Inside the horizon (2014). On the occasion of the COP21 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015, Eliasson made climate change tangible by leaving twelve massive blocks of Greenlandic glacial ice to melt in the Place du Panthéon for the installation Ice Watch.

In 2012, Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen founded Little Sun. This social business and global project provides clean, affordable light to communities without access to electricity; encourages sustainable development through sales of the Little Sun solar-powered lamp and mobile charger, designed by Eliasson and Ottesen; and raises global awareness of the need for equal access to energy and light. Earlier this month in Davos, Eliasson received the prestigious Crystal Award for ‘creating inclusive communities’ – a tribute to his work with Little Sun.

From 2009 to 2014, Eliasson ran the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments), an innovative model for art education affiliated with the Berlin University of the Arts. A comprehensive archive of the institute’s activities can be found online.

In 2014, together with architect Sebastian Behmann, Eliasson founded Studio Other Spaces, an international office for art and architecture. As an architectural counterpart to Studio Olafur Eliasson, Studio Other Spaces focuses on interdisciplinary and experimental building projects and works in public space.

Established in 1995, Eliasson’s studio today employs ninety craftsmen, specialised technicians, architects, archivists, administrators, and cooks. They work with Eliasson to develop and produce artworks and exhibitions, as well as to archive and communicate his work, digitally and in print. In addition to realising artworks in-house, the studio contracts with structural engineers and other specialists and collaborates worldwide with cultural practitioners, policy makers, and scientists.