Search results for ""hirmer""

This publication is basedon the major exhibition All Our Relations, which explored the complex and multiple meanings of diaspora, its condition and experience as expressed through painting. As part of a discursive approach, All Our Relations brought together works by artists thatelicit meanings of the diasporic condition from a diversity of perspectives, methodologies and aesthetic languages. The medium of painting, with its deep and complex history becomes a particularly provocative lens through which to explore the complications as well as the celebration and richness of diasporic experiences. With a desire for an intergenerational dialogue the exhibition also presented proposals that push the boundaries of what painting is and can be.Featuring full-colour reproductions and installation views, each work is accompanied by a texts by a wide range of writers that explore each artist’s practice.

Read more less

The publication provides an overview of the fascinating work of the contemporary Dutch artist Juul Kraijer. Her monumental drawings, photographs, sculptures and video works sound out and dissolve the boundaries of the human body and show hybrid creatures between animal and human. In her works Juul Kraijer examines human nature. For her, the body becomes synonymous with humanity. She primarily portrays female figures whose bodies have mostly undergone a metamorphosis: bodies dissolve into swarms of fish, fuse with gnarled branches or become transformed into animals. The boundaries of bodies are constantly sounded out and crossed. The book shows in large format a selection of Kraijer’s works, offers an overview of the artist’s oeuvre and gives her an opportunity to speak personally in an interview.

Read more less

Elvira Lantenhammer’s paintings are colour events which rely to a considerable extent on intensity of colour. The choice of colour and its application take place intuitively in an examination of the effects of colours and their interaction with regard to a specific location. The term Site Plan, under which the abstract works are subsumed, serves here as an open action grid which conquers new spaces for the colours.Colour is the principal actor in Lantenhammer’s pictures –finely tuned or in bold complementary contrasts. The variations in the application of colour in the paintings challenge us to view them with relish. Her oeuvre sometimes reflects forms which particularly characterise a place. Mostly, however, the very colour harmonies and a structure of coloured surfaces are what which make the emotional and energetic qualities of a place or a country tangible. The publication provides a comprehensive overview of the work of the past ten years.

Read more less

The American photographer Abe Frajndlich has close connections with New York. He describes the cityas his muse and repeatedly records it and its people in haunting photographs.This volume shows selected, highly personal images which are very different from the ubiquitous postcardsand poster views, which is lavishly illustrated in this book. Abe Frajndlich (*1946, Frankfurt am Main) is known internationally for his portraits of famous people such as Jack Lemmon and Stephen Hawking. Since moving to New York in 1984 the city itself has been one of his principal subjects. He is fascinated by its radiance and watches spellbound how it changes and reinvents itself on a daily basis. The result is a multi-faceted picture: the black-and-white photographs aresometimes perceptive, sometimes thoughtful, and sometimes witty or quirky –but they are always a declaration of love to New York.

Read more less

Shuvinai Ashoona (born 1961) is a third-generation Inuit artist based in Kinngait, Nunavut, Canada. Best known for her highly personal and imaginative iconography, Shuvinai’s imagery ranges from closely observed naturalistic scenes of her Arctic home to monstrous and fantastical visions. Her drawings imagine the past and present fused into a prophetic future. Existing somewhere between dystopic and utopic, Shuvinai’s brightly coloured drawings teem with life. Her earthly and extraterrestrial worlds exist within a kind intergalactic future. The book provides insight into Shuvinai’s practice, with essays from Canadian and international authors, reflections on specific drawings, a select exhibition history and large-format illustrations, including installation images from The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada.

Read more less

This survey brings together three decades of work by contemporary Native American artistGerald Clarke (Cahuilla). Utilizing wit and humor to expose historical and present-day injustice, Clarke brings a decolonial perspective to urgent cultural and political issues facing our world. Gerald Clarke is an artist, university professor, Cahuillatribal leader, cowboy, and Indian (the artist’s preferred identity). Combining various media in his sculptures, paintings, works on paper, videos, performances, and installations, Clarke derives artistic inspiration from his cultural heritage, expressing traditional ideas in contemporary forms that are both poetic and politically urgent. Clarke’s artistic output resonates with histories of assemblage, pop, and conceptual art produced by both Native and non-native artists. This amply illustrated catalogue introduces Clarke’s work at a moment when it is profoundly necessary.

Read more less

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891–1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin’s Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact today.

Read more less

The famous international painter and performance artist Helmut Schober (* 1947) has focused for the past 40-odd years on the vortex and its intercultural content. Over the decades the vortex has remained a constant in his oeuvre, always supported by his main preoccupations of depicting and making tangible light, time, space and cosmos.The qualities ascribed to the vortex include, amongst others, the constant cyclical continuity of life, triggered by the continuous rotation, as well as fate and fear. We feel ourselves to be subjected to a power which we cannot influence. Today’s world, its conflicts, the unfair distribution of property and economic decline, the resulting fear and the unpredictability of the future ‒ all these are merged into the metaphor of the vortex. This attractively designed volume visualises the vortex in numerous illustrations. It captures the viewer in its swirling maelstrom and prompts emotions.

Read more less

When considering the term “icon”, how can the idea of cultic worship be connected with the concept of the transcendental today? The qualities of the traditional icon continue to have an effect, particularly in the spiritual presence and auratic power of many modern and contemporary artworks. This volume presents masterpieces which expressesaspects of spirituality and reverence in a variety of individual ways.The works extend from Russian icons via Caspar David Friedrich, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko and Yves Klein to Andy Warhol, Niki de Saint Phalle, Isa Genzken and Andreas Gursky. Everyday icons from the world of brands and pop culture complete the range of images. The choice of works and the essays by selected authors contrast the interpretation of the traditional concept of the icon in art with the phenomenon of the creation of icons in our day-to-day environment. The publication aims to demonstrate the spiritual power of art and invites the reader to contemplation.

Read more less

The paintings and drawings of Michele Melillo (*1977) enchant the viewer with their lightness and harmonious colours. Accompanied by an explanatory essay by Veit Ziegelmaier, this comprehensive artist monograph reproduces for the first time works from all work cycles by the young German painter and graphic artist.Michele Melillo starts with historicalreferences when developing his works, combining in masterly style motifs from the Baroque and Rococo eras with a modern vocabulary of forms, folkloric ornaments and classical architecture. Fauvist orgies of colour and sprawling lines characterise the recurring subjects of his pictures: the barque as a symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra, fabulous creatures and unusual animal pictures or portraits of people long believed to be dead. After studying painting with Prof. Axel Kasseböhmer at the Academy of Fine Arts, today Melillo lives and works in Munich. As the monograph impressively proves, hisworks instantly fascinate the viewer and surprise repeatedly with their profound wit.

Read more less

A master of colour and an ambitious cosmopolite: Hans Purrmann (1880–1966) was an authoritative figure who forged links in European Modernism both as an artist and a personality, as a stylist and a figure of social integration. The balance between a record of what he saw and the visual reflexion of painting as a form of expression hovers lightly in his pictures.As a young man Purrmann encountered the latest movements of the art of his time in Munich and Berlin, but after moving to Paris he established contact with the avant-garde in the circle of artists at the Café du Dôme. He became a student and friend of Henri Matisse, with whom he ran an art school. Political events and the world wars turned Purrmann into an artist who travelled through Europe and who knew how to find his subjects based on the beauties of the world in every location. The book offers a representative cross-section through hisopulently colourful work.Text in English and Danish.

Read more less

The private art collection of the Hilti Art Foundation includes over 200 top-quality paintings, sculptures and photographs from Classic Modernism to the present day. Volume 2 of the two-part catalogue of the collection presents 120 selected works from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, from Josef Albers to Thomas Struth.The part of the collection shown in Volume 2 contains in particular abstract and concrete art from 1950 to the present day which focuses on material, surface, space and movement as well as form, colour, rhythm and light. It includes works by Fontana, Klein, Manzoni, Uecker, Mack and Colombo as well as Albers, Bill, Fruhtrunk, von Graevenitz, Richter and Sonnier. There are major work complexes by Gottfried Honegger, Gotthard Graubner, Imi Knoebel and Sean Scully. A special position is occupied by photographs by Thomas Struth with their content aimed at civilisation and technology as well as nature and culture.

Read more less

Heinz Mack (*1931) has been working as a sculptor and painter for more than sixty years. From the ZERO period in around 1960 to the present day he has created a wide-ranging work whose essential aspects, such as the significance of light, structure and colour are portrayed with often surprising perspectives. The authors accompany Mack in his constant search for a new concept of art, thereby discovering little-known connections to Minimal Art, Land Art, Yves Klein and Constantin Brancusi. The journey through Mack’s rich oeuvre culminates finally in his passionate plea for the “idea of beauty in the 21st century”.Heinz Mack is an artist who has left his mark on our times. He has made a pioneering contribution to the question of a new concept of art, which has been of fundamental importance since the post-war period. This volume offers for the first time a monograph with an overview of Mack’s philosophy of art as well as his multi-faceted oeuvre: from ZERO and the legendary Sahara Project to light art and his most recent paintings.

Read more less

Since the mid-1970s, Ericka Beckman (b. 1951, Hampstead, NY) has forged a signature visual language in film, video, installation, and photography. Often shot against black, spatially ambiguous backdrops, her moving image works are structured according to the logic of child’s play, games, folklore, or fairy tales, and populated by archetypical characters and toy-like props in bright, primary colours. Throughout her work, Beckman engages profound questions of gender, role-playing, competition, power and control. The publication will include selected works spanning thirty years of Beckman’s career, providing the first opportunity to survey her contribution to the art world. With new scholarly essays on Beckman’s work that offer an art-historical consideration of her early Super-8 Films and a critical situating of the artist’s ongoing preoccupation with the structures of games, gambling, and capitalism, the exhibition catalogue contextualizes Beckman’s practice on the occasion of this major survey exhibition. More than 20 colour images in the catalogue include photo- documentation of Beckman’s works since 1983 and installation views of the MIT List Center exhibition.

Read more less

In the 1950s the hospital Berlin-Havelhöhe (today the Clinic for Anthropo-sophical Medicine) took over the building that had originally been erected as the National Socialist State Academy for Aviation. It was also there that the pilots who had attacked Guernica in 1934 as part of the Condor Legion had been trained. In 1960, Benjamin Katz fell ill with tuberculosis for a period of one and a half years. He stayed in Havelhöhe and produced an extensive collection of photographs during this time. 48 enlargements together with 380 working prints from the negatives on 30 facsimiled DIN-A4 pages document on the one hand the everyday routine as a patient, but also the architecture and the traces of National Socialism.

Read more less

There Where You Are Not brings together the writings of celebrated Palestinian artist and theorist Kamal Boullata (b. 1942). Produced over four decades of exile in Europe, North Africa, and the United States, many are translated into English or published for the first time. The experience of exile and imperatives of resistance permeate the essays, whose subjects range from autobiography to contemporary art, early ruminations on gender relations, language and the visual, to questions of identity and globalization. Taken collectively, they explore intersections between aesthetics, history, and politics that are central to the historio-graphy of modern Arab art.

Read more less

The Bavarian State Painting Collections hold 31 masterpieces by Georg Baselitz from all the artist’s creative phases. The volume analyses for the first time these important paintings and sculptures within the context of the history of the collection, which has been shaped not only by the artist’s out-standing supporters and collectors, including Duke Franz von Bayern, but also by the passionate commitment of the directors and curators of the museums. In 1972, when Sea Swallow became the first work by Georg Baselitz to join the Bavarian State Painting Collections, this represented the first step towards the establishment of an epoch-making collection. Today, 46 years later, the museum is dedicating this extensive publication to this main focus within its holdings which has been built up over the past decades. It spotlights one of the highlights of its collection of art after 1945, whose outstanding profile in the international museum landscape is also charac -terized by unique holdings of works by Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Arnulf Rainer and Fred Sandback.

Read more less

The Great Landscape with a Tempest in Vienna is one of Peter Paul Rubens’s largest and most dramatic landscapes. Starting from the far-reaching discoveries during the latest restoration, the volume provides a comprehensive insight into the process of creation of this fascinating picture as well as its art-historical interpretation. Evidently produced for pleasure, the Great Landscape remained in Rubens’s possession until his death. As the restoration has shown, Rubens changed the painting several times and only added the story of Philemon and Baucis at the end. The poor elderly couple were the only ones to offer Jupiter and Mercury hospitality and were thus rescued from the punishment of the floods. The restoration procedures and the complex composition and creation of the painting are discussed together with its art-historical classification. A consideration of Rubens’s portrayal of nature and thus the outstanding position of this work in European landscape painting round out the presentation.

Read more less

Elia Alba’s The Supper Club photographic portrait series depicts U.S. - based artists of colour. Alongside the portraits are excerpts from dinner conversations addressing issues that relate to race and visual culture on themes including sanctuary, policin g, post - black identity and intersectional identities connecting gender, race and privilege. Elia Alba’s The Supper Club focuses on racial politics and visual culture. Curated by Sara Reisman for The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, The Supper Club is c omprised of socially - engaged dinners and portraits of artist participants. She began photographing artists of color like LaToya Ruby Frazier and Mickalene Thomas in 2012. To give voice to her community Alba hosted dinners, 25 so far, with themes like Balt imore, Race and Identity (in honor of Freddy Gray) and Racial Subjugation in Latin America. Inspired by Vanity Fair’s “Hollywood Issue,” Alba’s portraits capture each artist’s unique voice, transforming them into iconic images.

Read more less

Energy Overlays provides a glimpse into our post - carbon future where energy infrastructure is seamlessly woven into the fabric of our cities as works of public art. Fifty designs use a variety of renewable energy technologies to arrive at innovative site - specific solutions. Power plants of the future will be the perfect place to have a picnic! On the foreshore of St Kilda with the skyline of Melbourne as a backdrop rises a new kind of power plant – one that merges renewable energy production with leisure , recreation, and education. Energy Overlays provides a roadmap to our sustainable future with essays about the energy transition and beautiful renderings and diagrams of more than fifty designs. The result is a city where the infrastructures that power our world are designed to be reflections of culture, where public parks provide clean electricity to the city grid, and where the art that makes our lives more vibrant and interesting is also part of the solution to climate change.

Read more less

The history and culture of Europe has been decisively shaped by the exploration and use of the seas surrounding Europe. This catalogue book reflects the significance of the sea as a space of rule and trade for Europeans, as bridge and border, as resource and a site of desire. The book also reviews the changing perception of the sea in the arts. Europe is a maritime continent: measured by the length of its coasts and its total size, none of the five continental masses on the planet has more points of cont act with the seas than Europe. The importance of the sea for the development of European civilisation is illustrated by the themes of myths, shipbuilding and seafaring, rule of the seas, European coastal trade, expansion, the slave trade, migration, the ma ritime global economy, resources, oceanography, tourism, and the artistic perception of the sea. Thirteen themes, each linked to a port city, range from Antiquity to the present day and demonstrate that the domination of the seas was a central component of European power politics for centuries.

Read more less

Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York) is one of the most highly regarded and influential artists working today. This book focuses on her new exhibition, film screenings and performances at Tate Modern and Haus der Kunst, and includes several interviews with the artist, giving valuable insights into her interdisciplinary approach and artistic processes. A pioneer of performance art in the 1960s, Joan Jonas’s experimental installations include projections, videos, drawings, soundscapes, props and masks. Featuring her new exhibition at Tate Modern and Haus der Kunst, this publication focuses on new and past interviews with the artist. Jonas reveals her artistic processes, her influences and inspirations, from literature and Noh Theatre to rituals, and speaks of collaborations with Babette Mangolte or Jason Moran. Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York) has exhibited and performed her work extensively at an international level, including Documenta and the U.S. Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennial.

Read more less

Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism – these are still the most important stylistic labels which acted as slogans for French painting during the 19th century. At that time Delacroix, Courbet, Manet and many others left the “straight and narrow” of painting, the academic-neo-classical manner. Highly controversial at the time, today these painters are celebrated worldwide as precursors of Modernism. The situation is very different when it comes to the Salon painters like Meissonier, Cabanel, Gérôme and Bouguereau, who were highly regarded at the time. Today they have been consigned to the fringes, especially in the German-speaking region – unjustifiably, because they play an outstanding role with regard to our understanding of developments in art at the time.

Read more less

Rapunzel, the famous fairy - tale character of the Brothers Grimm, comes from the world of magic. She is the girl, lover, woman and mother who escapes from imprisonment. Elke Härtel awakens Rapunzel to new life, modelled in clay and then cast in plaster and bronze. The publication documents the fascinating process of creation with lavish illustrations. Elke Härtel draws on inner pictorial worlds as well as on fairy tales, myths and religious concepts. She takes her strong, usually female figures from the depths of dreams and from literary references. Born in 1978, she studied at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her sculptures and large - format drawings have already been shown in the Lenbachhaus München and in the Diocesan Museum in Freising, amongst other places. Thanks to her numerous projects in the public space she occupies an influential position in contemporary sculpture, as this evocative pictorial volume impressively demonstrates .

Read more less

Unsettled focuses on work by artists living and/or working in the Greater West, a super - region that broadens conventional definitions of the West. It is bounded from Alaska to Patagonia, and from Australia to the American West. Though ranging across thousands of miles, these comparative Wests share similar histories born of collision between indigenous and frontier cultures. They also share common concerns of land and water use, harvest and extraction, and the preservation of natural beauty and wide - o pen space. The geographic focus of Unsettled begins in Alaska and continues down the west coast of North America, through Central America, concluding in Colombia. Unsettled features 200 art objects from this region, ranging from Pre - Columbian art to moder n and contemporary art. Organized by Curatorial Director and Curator of Contemporary Art JoAnne Northrup with Collaborating Curator, iconic Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha, Unsettled makes connections among the diverse cultures and artistic practices of this superregion. Work I n the exhibition responds to the Greater West’s legacies of colonialism, conflict, and changing landscape. It also explores the unsettled edges of cultural and creative production in the Greater West.

Read more less

Martin Luther changed the world. He inspired and provoked people, and he moved them and repulsed them – but he left no one cold. The volume invites the reader to study Luther at close quarters, to accompany him in his existential search and to enquire into his lasting importance for the present and the future . By examining 95 precious objects this publication to accompany the exhibition follows in the footsteps of the young monk Luther along his route towards the Reformation. Who was the man wh o published his theses against the trade in indulgences despite being in mortal danger? Whatstates, events and circumstances prepared the ground for this epoch - making posting of the theses? The second part of the volume presents 95 people. From Johann Seba stian Bach to Bruce Nauman, from Sophie Scholl to Pier Paolo Pasolini: irrespective of creed or life philosophy, people all over the world make reference to the great reformer. That is perhaps the most interesting thing about Luther: that he has continued to move people for 500 years.

Read more less

Expressionism powerfully heralded the onset of the twenties. Today, the buildings that remain demonstrate great creativity with form and skillfull use of light, colour, and material, highlighting verticality and drama--the essence of the modern metropolis. With Fragments of Metropolis: Berlin, researcher Christoph Rauhut and photographer Niels Lehmann set out to document all the remaining expressionist buildings in Berlin. With Fragments of Metropolis--Rhein Ruhr, Rauhut and Lehmann present the results of the next phase of this major undertaking, showing that the Rhine-Ruhr region had a similarly rich expressionist heritage. Lehmann's new photographs are here set alongside drawings, an illustrated index of buildings, and maps that help the reader group the buildings by area, including Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Cologne, Munster, Oberhausen, and more. Simultaneously a celebration of a lost period and a reminder of the riches it has left to us, Fragments of Metropolis--Rhein Ruhr is a stunning achievement of historical and artistic preservation.

Read more less

The artist Stefan Hunstein brought magical photographs of untouched landscapes back from his journey to the Arctic in 2012. In their majesty and beauty, their immensity and their deadly cold they echo the visions of ice in painting and literature, especially during the Romantic era. The publication shows a selection of these breathtaking photographs which are being presented in public for the first time – also in a series of exhibitions. Here Hunstein, famous for his critical exami nation of contemporary history through the artistic processing of existing pictures, has taken up the camera himself and has created “Dream Pictures” which retain a hint of unreality in their outlines, shadows and reflections, in their theatrical blue lumi nosity and the bizarre, constantly changing structures. In these photos – printed on glass using a special technique – the artist links the fragile and the monstrous, the beauty of nature and “the horrors of the ice and of darkness” (Christoph Ransmayr)

Read more less

Henry Moore has influenced the history of twentieth - century sculpture more decisively than anyone else. He was one of the first contemporary sculptors to realise his ideas in the public space throughout the world. His oeuvre was a lasting source of inspiration for an entire generation of artists – from Hans Arp, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso to the younger generation of German sculptors. Henry Moore (1898 – 1 986), known as the “Picasso of Sculpture”, is regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the twentieth century and the epitome of the modern artist. Typical of his work is the interrelationship between nature and abstraction. He discovered the “voi ds“, so - called openings and holes which heighten the sculptural, three - dimensional effect of his works. With this new approach Moore exercised a strong influence on younger sculptors, who gained decisive impulses from his sculptures. This volume presents M oore as the dominant personality of modern sculpture in collaboration with the members of the younger generation of artists.

Read more less

The catalogue presents for the first time the rich Tibetan artistic heritage through the collection of Michael and Justyna Buddeberg: carpet manufacture, craftwork in metal and the manufacture of furniture. Previously neglected aspects of everyday Tibetan culture are explored and make the catalogue an essential starting point for further research. The Buddeberg collection includes masterpieces of Tibetan art in textile and metal work and presents us with hitherto disregarded asp ects of the Tibetan approach to art. Carpets for sitting on or as a riding accessory played a central role in their traditional culture but have hitherto been neglected in research, as has metal craftwork, which focused on the ornamentation of end knobs on the poles supporting the cultic paintings. The lavishly illustrated catalogue closes this gap and presents together with contributions by acknowledged specialists an in - depth overview of the fields of carpet and textile art, metalwork and furniture produc tion.

Read more less

With his artistic works, the sculptor Winfried Baumann (* 1956) evokes questions of social responsibility and the perception of contemporary social forms. His subjects are highly topical both as regards content with respect to social and urban-planning visions, and also formally as they cross the borders between fine art and applied design. For over thirty years the sculptor Winfried Baumann has focused his attention in the ecological problems which are increasingly advancing to become a question of survival for civilised society. Refuse, slag from the burning of refuse, waste oil and other waste products from our consumer society are materials which he has been using since the mid-1980s for his three-dimensional works and large-scale installations. In his very extensive group of works “Cathedrals” Winfried Baumann examines, for example, waste-disposal plants for large urban spaces, with the protection and marking of nuclear contaminated sites, waste-disposal facilities for large urban spaces and intermediate urban spaces and with the subject of urban mining.

Read more less

In the 1990s the landscape architect Peter Latz and his team designed and executed a park that transcended all fashions and trends. This volume provides insights into twelve years of planning and realisation through photographs, sketches, plans and explanations, and reveals to the reader a fascinating world in the footsteps of industry. The Landscape Park Duisburg Nord is one of the most remarkable examples worldwide of an intelligent and appealing approach to dealing with the legacy of industry. In his vision for the park Peter Latz largely abandoned the concept of landscape art and of the beautification of agricultural and woodland organisational patterns. Instead, he focused on the information-rich web of urban infrastructure and industry. Peter Latz presents the first in-depth account of his knowledge and experience regarding this unique project in this book. Texts by renowned collaborators complement the narrative with differing perspectives.

Read more less

Schermuly’s mutable and original oeuvre led him out of an abstraction governed by visual rules and into the fascination of reality-inspired colour. The intensity of his gaze explored what the appearance of the world has to offer to a virtuoso colourist for a painting. He was interested not in recreation but in understanding the visible to develop colour phenomena suitable for painting. Profound knowledge of the history of the art of painting was for Schermuly a guarantee of his originality. The elaborately prepared and lavishly produced book presents an artist of rare distinction to the isms of the second half of the twentieth century.

Read more less

For ten whole months, from September 1814 to June 1815, the imperial residential city of Vienna was the centre of Europe. Never before had there been a comparable meeting of sovereigns and their ambassadors: two emperors (Tsar Alexander I, Emperor Francis I[II]), five kings (Frederick I of Württemberg, Frederick VI of Denmark, Frederick William III of Prussia, Frederick August I of Saxony, Maximilian I of Bavaria), also many princes and diplomats from practically all parts of the continent converged upon th e capital for the diplomatic proceedings. The re - ordering of the European continent aimed to secure political stability at last after the Napoleonic Wars. Europe’s borders were redefined, the political balance of power re - established. These diplomatic proc eedings were accompanied by entertainments of all kinds – balls, festivities, sleigh rides and receptions, also theatre performances and musical events, the splendours of which were documented in words and pictures. Vienna blossomed as the centre of social life; the enhanced purchasing power also boosted the economy, brought foreign painters into the imperial capital, and spurred on all genres of art production on the home front. Thus the city became the political, cultural and social nucleus of Europe. Wi th numerous historical photographs, paintings and historical documents the publication will show the impact that this meeting had on the whole European continent and especially on Vienna. Several essays will draw light on the political, the cultural and th e entertainment side of this event of the century.

Read more less

The French artist Annette Messager (b. 1943) is one of the most import ant personalities of the international art scene. Her extensive installations focus on the human body and its attributes. Fragmented and joined together again with thread to form something new, she thereby creates a cosmos that is both fascinating and radi cal. In more than 40 years of artistic creativity Annette Messager has developed her own, concentrated pictorial language. In the early 1970s she still worked mainly with stuffed birds, knitting and picture collections; later these were complemented by dr awings, photographs and installations with soft toys and clothes. By assembling and arranging the most delicate of elements she produces visually stunning works on the gender clichés of contemporary society. This bibliophile’s art book reproduces the late st installations in addition to her most impressive works. It is published to accompany the first solo exh ibition in a German museum for 2 5 years and provides an opportunity to rediscover the oe uvre of Annette Messager.

Read more less

Heinz Mack’s Sahara Project is legendary. In 1968 he installed for the first time light columns with a height of up to 11 metres which reflected and mirrored the glaring sunlight in the Tunisian desert. Nature and object fused to create an artwork of breath-taking beauty. This comprehensive volume records the history and ideas of this spectacular project over four decades. Sophia Sotke’s in-depth presentation traces an arc from the conception of the project in 1958/59 via the sensational film Tele-Mack (1968) and the subsequent “Expedition into Artificial Gardens” of 1976 in Algeria andGreenland to the artistic experiments which Mack carried out in the Wahiba Desert in Oman in 1997. The uestion regarding the importance of the Sahara Project in Mack’s oeuvre is examined together with his role in the development of Land Art. Hitherto unpublished photos of the expeditions into the desert and the Arctic regions provide new insights.

Read more less

The Saint Louis Art Museum has assembled one of North America's largest and most comprehensive collections of German Expressionist paintings. Rediscover a defining movement of modern art through this original study of works by 25 artists who span its famously wide arc. This is the first publication on the Saint Louis Art Museum's internationally renowned collection of German Expressionist art, which includes major works by the movement's leading artists and lesser-known figures rarely seen outside of Germany. Engaging entries delve into the paintings' histories, from their production to their arrival in St. Louis. An introduction traces the collection's origins to the flood of Expressionist art that entered the United States during World War II. What emerges is a new account of a pivotal era in modern art.

Read more less

The artists as explorers: the Expressionist artists Kirchner and Nolde studied non-Western lifestyles and incorporated them into their artistic projects. Between “armchair anthropology” practised in the museums and “field-work anthropology”, which also took place in the colonies, both artists contributed to the construction of an (imagined) “other”, offering an alternative to bourgeois, “civilised” society in Germany. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde both spent time between 1910–11 studying objects and materials in ethnographic museums, but before long they expanded their investigations to include travels to colonial regions (Nolde) and the staging of “exotic” studio environments (Kirchner). The publication examines how both approaches evolved through an interplay between art, early German anthropology and colonial enterprise within the German Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. It contains not only paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, posters and documents, but also a variety of texts offering a broad overview as well as relating a specific narrative. Languages: English, Dutch, Danish

Read more less

Renowned for work that layers binary code with handmade craft, Fatimah Tuggar is one of the most original, incisive conceptual artists of the digital age. Tuggar’s sculp-tures, photomontages, videos, and interactive works challenge roman-ticized notions of both ancient traditions and recent inventions. Born in Nigeria and based in Kansas City, multimedia artist Fatimah Tuggar (b. 1967) interrogates the systems underlying human interactions with both high-tech gadgets and handmade crafts. She seeks to promote social justice by implicating everyone in these systems, while playfully proposing new ways of seeing and making. Her work destabilizes the attachment to a single city, nation, or continent as a “home” in a world of migrants who may move between different kinds of homes. The essays here address Tuggar’s œuvre within the confluence of the histories of conceptual art, tech art, and African art. In an interview with curator Amanda Gilvin, the artist reflects on the resonance of her early works and the goals of her new experiments in Augmented Reality (AR).

Read more less

Inspiration Islam – European artists in dialogue with Islamic art and culture. The art and architecture of the Islamic world strongly influenced the development of Western modernism. Some 170 works from the mid-19th century to the present day illustrate this fascinating cultural exchange. Beguiling examples of fine and decorative art reflect the diversity of this lively transfer. During the 19th century, Europe became caught up not only in Orientalism, but also in a real “Islamophilia”. Important collections of Islamic art were established. With the approach of modernism the view of these “foreign” influences changed. Artists of the avant-garde and masters of applied art sought inspiration for their own new style in the wealth of formal language and colourfulness characterized by Islamicate art. Positions of contemporary art to current Islamic discourse round out this multi-faceted publication. ARTISTS INCLUDE: Nevin Aladag | Baltensperger and Siepert | Marwan Bassiouni | Carlo Bugatti | Théodore Deck | Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo | Osman Hamdi Bey | Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann | Wassily Kandinsky | Gulsun Karamustafa | Bouchra Khalili | Paul Klee | J.& L. Lobmeyr | Henri Matisse | Gabriele Munter | Lotte Reiniger et. al.

Read more less

The contributions that have been assembled in this volume present the story of queer lives – from the first emancipation movements around the turn of the (last) century via attempts at self-empowerment in the Weimar Republic to the destruction of queer subcultures under the National Socialist regime and the continued discrimination of LGBTIQ* persons in the postwar period. Since the late 19th century, increasing numbers of people have self-assuredly championed the recognition of queer lifestyles. These pioneers formed collectives, made their voices heard and questioned dominant gender categories politically, scientifically and artistically. Through essays, interviews and artworks the authors and artists illustrate this struggle for recognition which was forcefully prevented and destroyed following the seizure of power by the National Socialists and almost forgotten after 1945.

Read more less

The English illustrator Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was in every respect a modern woman. For the publication of her plant collections she used the latest technology, the recently invented cyanotype. In 1843 she used the process to create the first photo book in history, with images of breathtaking beauty and originality which often look like modern art. At first Anna Atkins worked for and with her father, the zoologist John George Children; later she chose the objects for her scientific compositions herself: algae and ferns. Atkins placed them on light-sensitive paper that turned dark blue in water after being developed, with the exception of the places that had been covered by the plants. Initially alone, and then with her friend Anne Dixon, she produced well over 10,000 copies of her photograms and assembled them in several books like albums. Today these rare copies are regarded as treasures and are preserved in museums and libraries.

Read more less

Electro - mobility is the number one topic when it comes to our mobility in the future. What does the vision of the BMW Group, Germany’s main pioneer in the field, l ook like? For the first time providing extensive insight into BMW’s workshop of ideas, this volume presents the multi - faceted concept for sustainable and visionary mobility right up to autonomous driving. In the spring of 2008, a think tank of engineers, d esigners, trend researchers, and financial experts met on a factory floor of BMW’s parent plant in Munich to rethink mobility. This volume traces the exciting venture in its complex development, while also looking at the future. A main focus is on the major challenges of our time — climate change, scarcity of resources, megacities — and the solution approaches: technological innovations, networked mobility, and the use of renewable materials. Autonomous driving plays a particularl y important role. Terrific close - ups and design drawings present all models from the BMW i3 and the BMW i8 to the BMW i Vision Future Interaction.

Read more less

In 1970 in Munich Gerhard Richter met Brigid Berlin alias Brigid Polk, Andy Warhol’s legendary muse and enfant terrible of New York’s high society. This meeting gave rise to Richter’s important “Brigid Polk” series, based on Polaroid self-portraits by the eccentric artist: a dialogue between America and Europe, photography and painting, artist and muse. The series about Brigid Polk is an important record of Gerhard Richter’s photo paintings. It is exemplary of his struggle for a new self-concept of painting in dialogue with photography. This volume is the first to pay extensive tribute to this multifaceted series and traces the history of its creation, which revolved Heiner Friedrich, an important gallery owner in Munich. The personal reminiscences of those who were present at the time are particularly evocative of the avant-garde art scene of the 1970s.

Read more less

This unique book shows an album of photos taken in May & June 1913 when James Radley drove from London to Vienna via Paris, Mont Cenis Pass, Brescia, Riva del Garda, Dolomites, & Loibl Pass. His car was entered in the famous Österreichische Alpenfahrt, a gruelling 2650 kil ometre route with 19 mountain passes to drive across in seven days. On the journey out to Vienna, one of Radley’s passengers was his friend Reginald Hope, an amateur photographer who recorded the journey. Remarkably, both the car and Hope’s photo album su rvived, making it possible to recreate the journey with the same car and repeat the photographs in the identical locations exactly 100 years later, in May & June 2013. John Kennedy has been taking photographs since he could first afford to buy film for the family box camera. The digital cameras used nowadays are rather more capable, but the challenge is still much the same. Kennedy’s interest in old motor cars was sparked by seeing the movie ‘Genevieve’ when a boy, and subsequently seeing the actual car its elf, which lived for many years in his native New Zealand. An owner of vintage cars for over 30 years, he has taken part in many tours and rallies and has also organized tours in Britain, USA, Europe & New Zealand. The book shows the unique chance to drive the very same car from London to Vienna, to repeat a photograph album taken exactly a century earlier, the challenge being to find the locations and replicate the pictures to show the changes which a century has wrought.

Read more less

Conrad Felixmüller (1897–1977) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Second Generation of German Expressionism. He celebrated initial major successes with his art during the Weimar Republic. This volume illustrates the life and work of this unusual artist, whose creative career reflects more than half a century of art and contemporary history. In January 1919 Felixmüller founded the avant-garde Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919, whose members also included Otto Dix and Peter August Böckstiegel as well as other fellow artists. The works from the early 1920s reflect not only his interest in these people but also his political commitment. Under National Socialism Felixmüller’s works were proscribed as “degenerate”; after 1945 he endeavoured to continue his work in the GDR, albeit under new auspices. Ten years before his death, Felixmüller moved to West Berlin, where he lived to see the rediscovery of his work.

Read more less

Admired by contemporaries as an artistic “jack - of - all - trades”, Koloman Moser (1868 – 1918) is regarded today as one of the most important representatives of the Viennese Secession of around 1900. As a graphic artist and designer Moser was unparalleled in his artistic diversity, creating furniture, textiles, and objects – for the Wiener Werkstätte among others – that are icons of Modernism, as well as leaving behind an impressive oeuvre of paintings. A group of progressive artists, including Koloman M oser, founded “The Association of Visual Artists of Austria, Secession” under the leadership of Gustav Klimt in 1897. Moser in particular is considered the outstanding graphic artist of the Secession, thanks to his design of posters, exhibition concepts, a nd of the journal Ver Sacrum. He was the ideal master for the formation of the Gesamtkunstwerk “Vienna circa 1900”, hardly surpassed in imagination and productivity. He applied his incredible virtuosity and inexhaustible fantasy to a variety of materials. In 1903 Moser founded, together with Josef Hoffmann and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, the “Wiener Werkstätte” [Viennese Workshops]. The close cooperation between the designing artists and the master craftsmen allowed a completely new level of qualit y of to be attained in artisan craftwork. After 1907 Koloman Moser concentrated on painting once more. This publication presents exceptional examples of his art, drawn primarily from the Leopold Collection and situating them in a biographical and art histo rical context.

Read more less

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 – 1938) is one of the most important artist personalities of the twentieth century; many of his works have become icons of Expressionism. Vacillating between self - doubt and egocentricity, the artist created an incomparably mult i - faceted oeuvre with a remarkable instinct for the trends and imbalances of his time. Kirchner was the driving force behind and the most radical member of the artists’ association “Die Brücke”. He embarked on a promising career which reached a first zeni th in the expressive works of his Berlin years. His ecstatic creative impulse was the result of one of the “loneliest times of my life, in which an agonising restlessness constantly drove me out by night and day.” Even after Kirchner had found a new home i n Davos in 1917, his life continued to be full of tension and marked by phases of mental instability and unbroken creative energy. Anxious to ensure the correct reception of his works, during these years Kirchner invented the art critic Louis de Marsalle a nd published reviews of his own works under this pseudonym. This colourful and fascinating artist personality is presented by Thorsten Sadowsky, the author of this volume, in a knowledgeable and lucid manner through examples of his works and the stations of his life

Read more less