Search results for ""Author Donatien Grau""

No thinker in the West has had a wider and more sustained influence than the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. From philosophy to drama, religion to politics, it is difficult to find a current cultural or social phenomenon that is not in some aspect indebted to the famous philosopher and the Platonic tradition. It should come as no surprise that contemporary artists continue to engage with and respond to the ideas of Plato. Accompanying an exhibition at the Getty Villa, this book brings together eleven renowned artists working in a variety of media all of whom have acknowledged the role of Plato in their artistic process. Featuring candid interviews with the artists, this volume begins with an essay by the critic and curator Donatien Grau that contextualizes Plato in antiquity and in the present day. Contemporary art, Grau demonstrates, is Platonism stripped bare, and it allows us to reconsider Plato's philosophy as a deeply human construct, one that remains highly relevant today.

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The most recent installation by the internationally acclaimed artist Alicja Kwade (b. 1979), who comes from Katowice, explores the French physicist Léon Foucault’s (1819–1868) proof that the world rotates and develops the experiment further. The present volume illustrates the playful exploration of space and time using recent pictures from the Schirn rotunda. The Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade’s scientificlooking experimental setups are reminiscent of surreal and phantasmagorical constellations and objects. The fascination of her work, which cannot be explained by reason alone, is rooted in the skilful superimposition and sometimes paradoxical nature of scientific and social realities. Things that are generally taken to be established facts are called into question and disproved. Here the artist explores the true movement of time, which will have an immediate effect on both space and the viewer.

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Over the last two decades, the encyclopedic museum has been criticized and praised, constantly discussed, and often in the news. Encyclopedic museums are a phenomenon of Europe and the United States, and their locations and mostly Eurocentric collections have in more recent years drawn attention to what many see as bias. Debates on provenance in general, cultural origins, and restitutions of African heritage have exerted pressure on encyclopedic museums, and indeed on all matter of museums. Is there still a place for an institution dedicated to gathering, preserving, and showcasing all the world's cultures? Donatien Grau's conversations with international arts officials, museum leaders, artists, architects, and journalists go beyond the history of the encyclopedic format and the last decades' issues that have burdened existing institutions. Are encyclopedic museums still relevant? What can they contribute when the Internet now seems to offer the greater encyclopedia? How important is it for us to have in-person access to objects from all over the world that can directly articulate something to us about humanity? The fresh ideas and nuances of new voices on the core principles important to museums in Dakar, Abu Dhabi, and Mumbai complement some of the world's arts leaders from European and American institutions-resulting in some revealing and unexpected answers. Every interviewee offers differing views, making for exciting, stimulating reading.

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After the Crisis offers a platform for discussions between some of today's leading artists, writers, theorists, curators, and historians aimed at questioning the very status of photography today. Contributors come from the realms of critical theory, fiction, performance art, fashion photography, and museums, as well as film and design, and their conversations bring together history and the contemporary. Comparing the current situation of photographic images with the crisis experienced by representation at the time of the birth of photography, they set our relationship with photographic images in the digital era in perspective. Through these discussions, we come to sense the existential burden of being surrounded by images, while also beginning to grasp the historical depth of a questioning of images that started long before the current generation and engages with crucial political and cultural issues of our time.

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Throughout modernity there has been a clear divide between art and commerce. Objects could either be consumed as commerce or contemplated as art. Today, as museums are facing increasing financial pressure and as stores have become inventive locations for new modes of display, this clear divide has begun to dissolve. There is one place that represents a key stage in this evolution: 10 Corso Como. It was founded in Milan, at that very address, by fashion editor Carla Sozzani and has since expanded to Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. The name “concept store”, which has now spread across our globalized world, was originally coined to describe this new form. This book is the first philosophical inquiry into this new form of store and it sheds new light on how categories that have governed our modern lives, such as commerce, art, fashion, and museum, are being redefined today.

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Throughout modernity there has been a clear divide between art and commerce. Objects could either be consumed as commerce or contemplated as art. Today, as museums are facing increasing financial pressure and as stores have become inventive locations for new modes of display, this clear divide has begun to dissolve. There is one place that represents a key stage in this evolution: 10 Corso Como. It was founded in Milan, at that very address, by fashion editor Carla Sozzani and has since expanded to Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and New York. The name “concept store”, which has now spread across our globalized world, was originally coined to describe this new form. This book is the first philosophical inquiry into this new form of store and it sheds new light on how categories that have governed our modern lives, such as commerce, art, fashion, and museum, are being redefined today.

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An Atlas of Es Devlin, the first monograph on artist Es Devlin’s genre-defying practice, is an experiential publication encompassing art, activism, theatre, poetry, music, dance, opera and sculpture. Devlin’s protean work is rooted in a life-long practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts, be they poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports or endangered species lists, emerge the technically advanced, collectively imagined universes for which she is globally renowned. Fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts and small mechanical cardboard models form the seeds of some of the most iconic, large-scale, multi-disciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, Serpentine, V&A, Barbican, Imperial War Museum and the Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the National Theatre, as well as Olympic Ceremonies, Super-Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyonce, The Weeknd, U2, Rosalìa, Dr Dre and Kendrick Lamar. Devlin’s work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Over the past decade her art practice has engaged with biodiversity, linguistic diversity and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works. Published in association with a retrospective exhibition opening at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York in November 2023, An Atlas of Es Devlin is a unique, sculptural volume of over 900 pages, including foldouts, cut-outs, and a range of paper types, mirror and translucencies, with over 700 colour images documenting over 120 projects spanning over 30 years, and a 50,000 word text featuring the artist’s personal commentaries on each art work as well as interviews with her collaborators including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bono, Benedict Cumberbatch, Pharrell Williams, Carlo Rovelli, Brian Eno, Sam Mendes, Alice Rawsthorn and Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye. Each book is boxed and includes a die-cut print from an edition of 5000. ‘Es is like superstring theory, at least eleven dimensions.’ Hans Ulrich Obrist ‘Es knows how to bend the mind around corners of our experience.’ Benedict Cumberbatch ‘Es takes our inchoate aspirations and sculpts them into a stage.’ Bono ‘I wish we’d had Es as a psychologist on some of our projects.’ Brian Eno ‘Es’s mind is both forensic and associative. She is able to x-ray a play and then she starts to dream.’ Lyndsey Turner ‘Es is a turning point for anyone she interacts with.’ Pharrell Williams ‘Es creates moments in which we suddenly become aware of life and existing, and time.’ Carlo Rovelli ‘With Es, there’s no “No”. She creates a whole universe.’ Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye

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Between a Temple of Art and a Big EventAs places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and timely insights into museum operations, the histories of various institutions, and their leaders’ very personal attitudes toward art. This volume reads like a detective story about the mediation efforts of museums and the personal motives behind them. Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, Director of the Louvre, Paris, 1987–1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Director of the Tate, London, 1980–1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984–2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977–2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 1961–2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1998–2008; SIR MARK JONES, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001–2011; TOM KRENS, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venice, and Bilbao, 1988–2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1998–2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Director of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (1994–2001), and the Louvre, Paris (2001–2013). DONATIEN GRAU is a newspaper art critic, a museum curator, and a university teacher. His lively and clever voice has a firm place in the field of art.

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The work of Fabrice Samyn is as diverse as it is complex, often referencing masterpieces of art history. In his paintings, sculptures and drawings, the artist manages to translate and magnify details from the paintings of the old masters. With his fascination for the spoken word and everyday poetry, he also follows the path taken before him by his Belgian compatriot René Magritte.

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Calder Now documents an exhibition at the Kunsthal Rotterdam which explores the enduring influence of the work of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) on contemporary art. Shown alongside pieces by Calder himself are works by 10 contemporary artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Simone Leigh, Ernesto Neto, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Sarah Sze. The text explores the way their work resonates with Calder's main artistic interests, such as the reflection of light and movement. Three noted art historians elaborate on themes such as the participatory and progressive nature of Calder's art.

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In the mid-1970s, Sylvère Lotringer created Semiotext(e), a philosophical group that became a magazine and then a publishing house. Since its creation, Semio-text(e) has been a place of stimulating dialogue between artists and philosophers, and for the past fifty years, much of American artistic and intellectual life has depended on it. The model of the journal and the publishing house revolves around the notion of the collective, and Lotringer has rarely shared his personal journey: his existence as a hidden child during World War II; the liberating and then traumatic experience of the collective in the kibbutz; his Parisian activism in the 1960s; his time of wandering, that took him, by way of Istanbul, to the United States; and then, of course, his American years, the way he mingled his nightlife with the formal experimentation he invented with Semiotext(e) and with his classes. Since the early 2010s, Donatien Grau has developed the habit of visiting Lotringer during his trips to Los Angeles; some of their dialogs were published or held in public. This book is an entry into Lotringer's life, his friendships, his choices, and his admiration for some of the leading thinkers of our times. The conversations between Lotringer and Grau show bursts of life, traces of a journey, through texts and existence itself, with an unusual intensity.

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Tom Bishop has, for over sixty years, helped shape the literary, philosophical, cultural, artistic, and political conversation between Paris and New York. As professor and director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture at New York University, he made the Washington Square institution one of the great bridges between French innovation and a New York scene in full transformation. Bishop was close to Beckett, championed Robbe-Grillet in the United States, befriended Marguerite Duras and Hélène Cixous, and organized historic public encounters—such as the one between James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. He was also a scholar, a recognized specialist in the avant-garde, notably the Nouveau Roman and the Nouveau Théâtre. In 2012, Bishop invited Donatien Grau to give a talk at NYU. This invitation led to conversations—many of which are presented in this book—and a friendship. Literature Is a Voyage of Discovery gathers their dialogues, retracing Bishop’s career, his own history, his departure from Vienna, his studies, his meetings, his choices, his conception of literature and life, his relationship to the political and economic world, and the way he helped define the profession of “curator” as it is practiced today, offering a thought-provoking look into one of the leading minds of our time.

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