Tiles

How are you, dear reader?

This might be a rather unusual post, but nonetheless I really wanted to share this with you.

A couple of weeks ago I went to an exhibition. Wow, really? Yes. But it was not your usual art expo. No, it was a tile exhibition. I know, this breaks with the regular scheme of artreviews but it was an actual exhibition and to be honest, it was very interesting.

There were regular tiles, big tiles, huge tiles, tiny tiles, colorful tiles, ornamented tiles. So there were alot of differnet shapes, colors, materials and they were displayed like little pieces of art. So I wanted to give them the honor of not just being simple tiles for once, but to be viewed as little pieces of art.

Kolorful. Kute. Kolossal. Koons

Hello,

Jeff Koons at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel. Of course I had to go. And good thing I did. It was an amazing exhibition.

The works by Koons always succeed in rendering the visitor happy and light, entertained and yet feeling the extraordinary quality of the art displayed. As Koons said:

"My work is a support system for people to feel good about themselves."

And it's clear why. The installations are colorful, huge and are very cute, to say the least. Koons' motives are sweet, almost trivial. Little kittens hanging in socks, smiling bears waving at you, piles of cute barnyard animals... you get the idea.

But the most famous pieces by Koons might be the huge Balloonanimal-Installations. From the 100 kilogramm heavy monography I purchased about Koons I learned that he was always fascinated by airfilled objects. The lightness was something that intrigued him and inspired him to create several Balloon-objects in the series "Celebration". The pieces look like huge Balloonfigures modelled by streetclowns but are infact massive stainless steel sculptures, glazed in transparent paint. They seem light as a feather, but in reality they weigh several tons. 

Of course there were other works that fascinated me. Especially one piece caught my eye, it seemed like I had seen it before. It seemed like a baroque mirror, an lavish golden frame but an odd form. There was no clear surface but alot of curves and edges. Then I saw the outlines of a face. I had seen that face before. I read the description in the guide and there it was. The solution. The weirdly shaped golden mirror was actually shaped like Baby-Jesus from a famous Da Vinci Painting (I went to see it in Paris, go check out my post about St. Anne http://www.miumiupow.blogspot.ch/2012/08/african-photographs.html). Marvelous!! Note how the media corresponds with the theme. 

And as you know, I love these kinds of things, where artists quote other pieces of art and use them as inspiration. I find it fascinating!

Apart from the huge installations and sculptures, paintings and collages there were also pieces of Koons' early works in the tradition of the ready-made, introduced by Duchamp in the early 20th century. In the series "The New" Koons displays new, unused vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers. Here again we detect Koons' fascination with air, airfilled objects and machines., he even calls them "breathing machines". The lifelessness which is bestowed on objects like these dissappears and they appear to have some kind of biological, living quality. 

Koons' equally spectacular and subtle works are repeatedly concerend with themes such as innocence, beauty, sexuality and happiness. These reflect his conception of an art that is accesible to every viewer.

National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo

Hello dear ones,

I did allready talk about Bulawayo, an artist from there and the National Gallery in Bulawayo. But I never took the time to actually talk about the building the museum is housed in.

It is one of the oldest original buildings still used in Bulawayo. It is called the Douslin House after its architect William Douslin.

After water and electricity became available in Bulawayo on June 1898 and the railway reached the city in 1897 an economical boom occured. Spaces for shops and offices were needed. The Douslin House, formerly known as the Willoughby's Building was finished in 1901 and then opened for business. The Bulawayo Art Gallery purchased the building in September 1980 when the museum officially opened. The history of the building is documented extraordinarily well through original plans, letters from involved people like landlords, architects and funders aswell through local newspapers like the Bulawayo Chronicle.

But now to the building itself. The imposing principal entrance to the building is in Main Street. There is a portico decorated with beautiful moulded cornices, pillars, an impressive pressed metal ceiling. The front doors have elaborate brass fingerplates. The entrance hall is similarly decorated. There, a magnificent staircase gives way to the first floor. The newel and banisters posts are of Burma teak and walnut, with the newel posts being beautifully carved. 

The skirting throughout the building is of generous proportions and the offices also have decorative moulded cornices. The doors are said to be of Burma teak. The handles are brass with brass fingerplates.

Like the National Gallery in Harare the Gallery in Bulawayo is a state institution. All the actions, events and exhibitions must be approved by the state which can sometimes lead to conflict. When I visited the Gallery the current exhibition was closed down, since it didn't agree with the "rules" of the state. I guess it was critical to the current state of the country or portrayed political issues very harshly. I can't tell, I didn't see it. I could only sneak a peak and id did seems pretty violent, mostly because of the red and black colors and the red walls. 

But the National Gallery in Bulawayo is an outstanding institution, no doubt about it. Here its statement released from the management:

"At the National Gallery in Bulawayo, we are tasked with the creative and intellectual discipline to select, to nurture and commend outstanding works of visual art, to select and display pivotal works, to generate and improve upon existing talent, to train and develop artistic skills, to educate, to empower, to mediate, and mostly to celebrate."

African Pastels.

Evening,

So, I‘ve mentioned Stanley Sibanda allready. He is a new and exciting visual artist, based in Bulawayo. I had the chance to take a look at his studio, which is located in the studio-building the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo provides for young and newcoming artists. 

I always love to see where artists create their work, their environment, their view out of the window. 

Stanley Sibanda, 37, is married and has two children. In 2007 he decided to focus his life entirely on art and painting.

His work is similar to alot of other Zimbabwean artist. The themes he pics are mostly based on rural life scenes such as busstations, farming men and women but also landscapes and animalportraits, which are the common themes. I know it sounds a little touristy, but the way he paints is very different from the others. For some reason african artist or pictures with an african background always use vibrant glowing colors. The continent seems to have this image of an almost violent colorscheme, which is in fact only true at sundown, when the sun turns everything into a flaring red. Breathtaking, But most of the time, the countryside is dusty and almost colored in pastel tones.

Sibanda takes on this colorscheme of pastels and the feeling of dust and sand in the air and paints the most lovely pictures. Sure, it‘s still the same themes, but they feel much more realistic and honest and not as mainstream and as i said before, not touristy. I really hope Sibanda evolves over time and finds a way to cut loose from traditional imgarey and find a more individual way to express his extraordinary talent in painting. 

African Photographs

Magadi Magadi,

Like every time when I'm in Harare I have to visit the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (NGZ) at least once! This time I was really impressed with all the improvements in all the areas of the museum. But most of all, I was impressed with the really great exhibition on display.

It was a photograph-exposition with photographs from different southern african photographers from the 1950's to present time. Most of them were portraits, mostly in black and white. The pictures show the process of how the photographers as newly independent citizens percieve the new and modern world they live in.

The show was separated in three different time-eras, so the viewer could really see the progress not only in technique, but also how people percieved themselves differently and started to find their own identities.

Here are my two favorite photographs of the 1950s-1960s.

The first one is a portrait of "Belle devant l'afro-negro club" from 1965 by Jean Depara. Depara is an internationally known talent and a pioneer in depicting modern african life. In this picture of a beautiful young woman, it is shown that, for example, western fashion and even hair, in the 60s was part of everyday life in Kinshasa. Depara lived and worked in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo and captured its citizens and an Africa stripped of conventional social codes.

This portrait was taken by Ricardo Rangel, a photjournalist and photographer from Mozambique. "Doorkeeper at the Moulin Rouge" from 1970 shows, as many works by Rangel do, the fusion of the african/mozambican culture with its colonial ancestors, the Portuguese.

The second part of the exposition covered the timeperiod between the 1970s and 1990s. The photographs showed the aftermaths of the different revolutions, pacific or armed. Change was fragile and complicated, but very much fought for. While the northern part of Africa allready started to rebuild, the southern part still used photography as a method to raise awareness and to bring the movements foreward. 

This picture was taken by Jodi Bieber from South Africa in 1997. "Sunday School Nababeep Northern Cape". It was one of my favorite pictures in the entire exhibition. The children seemed so happy and fierce to show off their talent in a controled and safe environment. Bieber focused her early work on the place she grew up - South Africa. After over two decades of work she won the Premier World Press Photo of the Year Award 2011.

Lastly, the third part of the expo was focused on the 2000s. Photography isn't just a form of narration anymore, it has emancipated to an independent artform. Much like the people of Africa themselves. The struggle is over and after years of independence a new identity was finally found. 

Here you can see "Hloni" in 2006 and "Sibu I." in 2005, photographed by Nontskikelelo "Lolo" Veleko, from her series "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder". In that series she portrays young Southafricans on the street, much like the wester trend of street-style-photography. The portrayed people are strong and confident and are proud to show off their individual style. The new generation of a new Africa.

Scrambled.

Good morning reader,

So, as you probably noticed, I haven't been keeping you updated very much lately. I and my interest for art have been traveling all over the place for the last month, even moving again!

I have some amazing posts prepared for you guys, they will soon be uploaded!

To not keep you hanging I'll share some city-surprises that I found on my routes. I did a streetart-post before, so you might know, that it is a passion of mine. I just think it's wonderful, if someone uses their surroundings not only as an inspiration, but also as a canvas. It makes you feel like suddenly your in a different world. A world someone else created and most of the time streetart accentuates things you wouldn't even notice.

So, to all of you out there. Keep your eyes open, you'll see your city through someone elses eyes for once.

Okay, here's stuff that caught my eye from four countries and five cities in a month.

On my last night in Paris I saw this brilliant paste-up/grafitti. And it was exactly what I felt like doing. Just draw a huge heart onto the most magnificent city in the entire world. 

(Maybe by Leo&Pipo...? Not sure.)

In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, I came across a to me formerly unknown artist who does beautiful work. As far as I understood Stanley Sibanda mostly paints rural scenes and landscapes with oil on canvans. I'll do a seperate post on him later, so I?m not going to spill all the beans.

Berlin, Kreuzberg. This huge astronaut-stencil is a real eyecatcher and you really wonder how someone did that. I mean, it's huge. And it's on a wall. Really high up there...  

Thun, Boardwalk. Don't let the pacmen get you. Amazing.

And back in Berne, finally. Not much changed, but I did discover a new decoration in a rather public space. This little dinosaur made me smile. Plus, also a political statement, because, you know, it's Berne, the capital. 

Not the Jeans...

Good Morning,

I think it‘s really important, especially for galeries, that they have an interesting display or poster or some sort of eyecatcher in their windows or doors. If you don‘t notice something special about a place, or don‘t even notice that it‘s a galery, the galery is doing something wrong.

So when I was walking through the city and I noticed these wonderful photographs in the window, I was instantly intrigued. Maybe also because the name next to the photo was a name I knew. 

But it wasn‘t a name I came across in my endeavors in art, but in my other field of study - social anthropology. 

The name Lévi-Strauss, for most people, means a famous brand of jeans-wear. But every anthropologist associates something else with that name. Claude Lévi-Strauss was a famous sociologist and ethnologist in the 20th century, who died recently in 2009 at the age of 101 years. 

In this lifetime he undertook many explorations, mostly to southern America. Brasil was frequently visited by Lévi-Strauss and his associates for research where he also took the photographs which were on display at the „Defacto la Gallery“- Galery. The title of the exposition was „Mondes Perdus“ and it displayed all pictures he took during a reserach trip where he tried to find out, how the technical progress and urbanisation influences and changes the life and agriculture of the indigenous farmers in Brasil. All the pictures were taken by a Leica camera and most of them are portraits of indigenous people living in the rainforest.

The photos were beautiful and very expressive, an effect that was enhanced through the black and white-styled pictures. My dad would have loved the exposition. Simple, expressive photos. 

Saint Anne vs. Mona Lisa

Bonjour mes amis,

During one of my latest visits to the Louvre, I decided to see the exhibition "Saint Anne, Leonardo Da Vinci's ultimate masterpiece".

It was a wonderful expo displaying not only one of the most famous paintings in the world, but also the process of a painter, from the scetch to the finished masterpiece, which is quite unusual.

"The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" is a large-format painting which was started by Da Vinci in 1501. He kept working on the ambitious masterpiece during his life up to his death in 1519.

The exhibition showed the long and thoughtful process of Da Vinci leading up to the final version. The show combined all known scetches and paintings of the iconographical subject of Saint Anne and her daughter Mary with her grandson, Jesus, by Leonardo.

Not only did the exhibition show the process leading up to the masterpiece, but it also showed how the painting influenced italian art in the 16th century and also more recent artists like Delacroix, Degas or Ernst. They all created new versions of the theme Da Vinci rediscovered. A truly art-historical approach to a painting.

And I got some humor out of the titel of the exposition considering that the Louvre is also homing the "Mona Lisa" by Da Vinci. But the curator funnily chose to name the "Saint Anne" Da Vincis ultimate masterpiece instead of the famous Joconde. Bold. I love it.

Marilyns Hand.

Grüezi Readers,

I have to confess, I was prejudiced. I went to the Centre Pompidou again, with visitors, and I dont know if I had a bad day or something, but I didn‘t really enjoy it. I know, I shouldn‘t or people in general shouldn‘t be snobby about art, but on this particular day I walked through the rooms and thought „this is art?“ „I could do that“ „why is this in here“ „this is a waste of space“.... You get the point.

And when I walked to this piece I thought it was a joke. Just random lines and squiggle-squaggles - and that was supposed to be art? I went to the description to find out who‘s responsible for this nonsense. 

And I was amazed!

It wasn‘t just random squigglings but someone, well not someone but Pierre Bismuth, actually had a pretty amazing idea! The artist and cameraman was born in France in 1963 and is also an awardwining screenwriter. This would explain the collaboration of painting and movies in his art.

The work is called „En suivant la main droite - de marilyn monroe dans 'some like it hot‘. And I guess you can imagine now what it is. Bismuth put a tracing paper on his tv-screen and followed for the length of the movie „some like it hot“ the right hand of the actress and icon Marilyn Monroe. What a funny idea.

So instead of calling out and idiot-wannabe-artist I got called out for being ignorant and snobby. Served me well, lesson learned.

Monumental MONUMENTA 2012

Art-Fans, 

So ever since I saw the beauty that is the Grand Palais at Art Paris, I kept my eyes wide open for more opportunities to visit the grand hall of the Palais. 

I had heard of the yearly Monumenta exhibition before. Since 2007 art-legends like Christian Boltanski or Richard Serra had been invited to create something special for the Grand Palais specifically.

This year Daniel Buren was asked and he accepted. He named his exhibition „Excentrique(s) Travail in situ“. I know, not much comes to mind with this titel, but I wanted to see it anyways. 

I was stunned!! Especially coming into the exhibition through this weird unusual entrance, I was not prepared for the amazingness that was infront of me. You come into this massive space of the Grand Palais through this tiny entrance and the whole room just opens up! And in the vast space Buren created a wonderful installation. On white and black iron pillars there were hundreds of multicolored round transparent foils in different sizes. As visitor you wandered under them, they were just about 3 meters high. It gave an even more asthounding impression of the actual overwhelming size of the Palais. And it also captured another very important feature of the huge hall - the light! 

Buren himself said, that even more beautiful than the Grand Palais and its architecture itself was the light in it. And that is what he intended to point out. He didn‘t want to create something that would not have anything to do with its surroundings but rather something that compliments it. So he decided to keep it quite simple and just find a way to make the people see and think about the hall itself through his installation. 

It definetely worked. As I was walking under the orange, yellow, green and blue transparents, feeling different under every color, all I really thought was how amazing the Grand Palais is. The architecture, the light, the athmosphere... it was wonderful! In the middle of the room were several mirrors on the floor on which you could walk on and see the huge dome of the Palais, which Buren changed a little for the Monumenta. 

And as I walked up on the balcony the view was magnificent aswell. From the balcony you got a view on the installation - before you had just walked under it, feeling like an ant in the grass. Now it seemed like you were seeing a beautiful colored pond with lots and lots of waterlilies. Then you walked down the other side and continued by being an ant again. 

It was truly one of the best exhibitions I ever saw. I managed to see it 4 times and I would have gone more, if I had had the time. Amazing. Well done, Daniel Buren!

The Moretti - No, it's not a drink.

Hey there,

One thing I hadn‘t done until now (shame on me) was visit La Défense. It is a businessquarter in the north-east of Paris. It is the elongation of the Champs-Élysées and it end with the modernist huge Grande Arche. La Défense consists of lots of Skyscrapers, Bureaubuildings, Shopping- and Businesscenters. It has, in contrast to the old parts of Paris, a very modern and steril feel to it. But it was worth the trip! 

In the middle of the busy lunchhours something caught my eye. From far away it looked like one of the skyscrapers but as I went closer, I saw that it was a huge cylindrical sculpture. It was made out of a lot of different colored and sized pipes and fit perfectly into the line of skyscrapers. 

It was called „The Moretti“ after its inventor Raymond Moretti. He created it in 1990, especially for La Défense - and besides it being a wonderful piece of art, it also serves as an industrial chimeney. Brilliant! Moretti was a french painter and sculpturer friends with famous artist of his time, like Picasso and Cocteau, with whom he shared close personal and professional relationships.

„The Moretti“ was a wonderful splash of color in the otherwise grey Défense. I enjoyed it quite alot.

Louis and Marc.

Friends of beautiful things,

I went to see an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs that no girl, or man for that matter should miss. It's a tribute-exhibition for Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs, two of the most influental and trendsetting individuals of their times.

The exhibition was organized chronologicaly, from the very beginning of the Vuitton-Emporium to the reign of Fashion-Superstar Marc Jacobs.

At first there was only a man and his brilliant idea to provide the proper packaging and transport for the new and upcoming fashion-craze. Louis Vuitton built suitcases, that fit entire wardrobes, toiletries and whatever else a true lady or gentleman needed at that time. He started his buisness for "articles de voyages - trunks and bags" in 1854 in Paris.

It was only Louis' son, Georges, who took the company further, and expanded into international business and created the famous LV monogramm that is stil used today.

The second part of the exhibition was a view on the current state of the Louis Vuitton Brand under Head-Designer Marc Jacobs. The concept of the upper floor was completely different from the traditional displays of the era of Louis Vuitton. It was flashy and poppy with videowall that show Jacobs' inspirations. And it even had a warning for parents at the beginning, that the material could be inappropriate for kids. Oh well...

It was mostly fashion, amazing handbags, purses, clutches etc, shoes and a history of Marc Jacobs' rise to one of the most important people in the fashion business today. No wonder, his creations, ideas and visions are magnificent and the displays were beautifully arranged and made every girls heart skip a beat.

It was weird, colorful, crazy and amazing - just as fashion today should be. At least that's my opinion.