Damaso Reyes and The Europeans
With the reconstruction of European identity on his mind, Damaso Reyes set out to challenge our picture of everyday life in Europe in the new millennium. The Europeans, a fresh and nuanced photojournalistic project on European society, focuses on change in the long term, on changes – social, political and economic – occurring within Europe and to European people. In his photos, Reyes [...]
Tricky Women: Vienna Celebrates Female Animators
The Pillsbury Doughboy, Mickey Mouse, the Simpsons – whether a Disney character in the movies, a hand-rendered family TV series, or a 3D computer-generated Hello Kitty, what we have come to know as objects, caricatures, forms that move and appear to live and breathe, are created by a process known as animation. The process [...]
The Importance of Being (Max) Ernst
“Before he descends, a diver never knows what he will bring back up,” wrote Max Ernst, an experimental artist who delved deep into the life of the mind, and a fitting tag line to Ernst’s retrospective at Vienna’s Albertina through 5 May. Walking through, visitors are swept along the path of Ernst’s life and, inseparably, [...]
Gilded Through History
It’s dark. We see a man entering a gallery whose dozens of display cases are all empty, save one. He approaches it, eyes wide with wonder at the golden object topped with two reclining figures in front of him: The Benvenuto Cellini Salt Cellar. While he gazes at it, he begins talking to the piece, [...]
A Soviet Legacy, Not Quite Lost
To most westerners, Soviet architecture means imposing, Neo-Gothic Stalinist towers, but the USSR’s 70-odd-year history saw other equally striking – if less celebrated – architectural styles. In the 1920s, a movement of Constructivist architects sought to reshape urban life with an ideal of a utilitarian, strictly functional living and working space. Driven by revolutionary fervour, [...]
Rethinking Vienna 1900
Last year, Vienna revived its modernist past with a flurry of activities around the iconic painting The Kiss to celebrate the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt. The buzz portrayed the painter, one of the driving forces behind the Wiener Secession, as foremost among progressive artists who ushered in the period of optimism they dubbed the [...]
At the Easel With Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt had a big year. Nearly a dozen Viennese museums have featured some sort of 150th anniversary exhibit in honour of the artist, whose photographs remind you of Bacchus with a smock and paintbrush. It’s easy to see why Klimt’s work (especially The Kiss) is so heavily promoted: it’s accessible enough for the average [...]
Anatomy of a Controversy: All The ‘Nude Men’
The recent furore over the Leopold Museum’s Nude Men exhibition posters earned some juicy headlines in the international media. “Viennese Gag on Big Streudels,” one blog proclaimed. “Penis Problem: A Vienna Museum Covers Up,” declared Deutsche Welle. “Nude Men Draw Women, Enraged Philistines to Vienna,” announced Bloomberg. BBC probed “The Shock of the (Male) Nude”, [...]
Art Metropolis, Living Memory
Variety caters to the pleasure principle, but it also creates a painful, existential dilemma: You’d have to be a loaf of bread sliced very thin, I decided, to spread yourself around to all the events of Vienna Art Week and Gallery Weekend. Predicting Memories was the overall theme as well as the central exhibition held [...]
