ART – BLUB WOODEN LIGHT BY FERMETTI

Made in natural oak, Blub lights are handcrafted in the laboratory of Belgian designer Fermetti. Available in four different shapes Blub lights are all characterized by an ironic and playful aesthetics.

Color and material finishes available: Natural oak / white fabric cord

http://ex-t.it

ART - SEEBRUHNE BREGENZ THEATER

Bregenz Festival - Floating Stage

Every year, the Bregenz Festival takes place in the Austrian city of Bregenz at the Lake Constance. Every summer the audience can experience excellent open-air opera performances 

on the biggest floating stage worldwide.

The creative spirit is perhaps one of the greatest gifts which we humans have been endowed with. Our task as a festival is not only to act as custodians of past creativity, but also to carry this creative power into the lives of our visitors.  

This year we celebrate the courage of the poet André Chénier, whose dedication to justice did not falter even in the face of revolutionary terror. Giordano's opera tells the story of a life that experienced both the wasteful luxury of the Ancien Régime and the radical policies of the Revolution; in the centre stands a passionate individual compelled by his conscience to place his hand in the hellfire of history. This is the stuff that perfect Seebühne operas are made of! All the more so if they come with music of such breathtaking emotional intensity as is the case with Umberto Giordano's André Chénier. 

With the opera in the Festspielhaus, we celebrate creation and creativity in a more direct way, having commissioned a new work from the Scottish composer Judith Weir. With the same single-mindedness with which we placed Mieczysław Weinberg centre-stage in the 2010 festival, this season we are assisting in the birth of a new opera: an opera written just for you! 

Judith Weir has always been fascinated by the age-old art of storytelling. In her very beautiful and accessible works, she draws on the mythical power of folk tales, many of which deal with age-old problems of human existence. Achterbahn / Miss Fortune is the modern retelling of such a tale – a story about the dizzying vicissitudes of life where, in the blink of an eye, a millionaire can be reduced to washing dishes for a living.

Many have called our programme daring, even risky.

We reply in Chénier's own words: "Obstacles make us great!"

http://bregenzerfestspiele.com

ART- HENRY MOORE EXHIBIT

Henry Moore

Tate Britain Linbury Galleries

Wednesday 24 February – Sunday 8 August 2010

Radical, experimental and avant garde, Henry Moore (1898-1986) was one of Britain’s greatest artists. This major exhibition will re-assert his position at the forefront of progressive twentieth-century sculpture, bringing together the most comprehensive selection of his works for a generation. Henry Moore will present over 150 significant works including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.

Henry Moore first emerged as an artist in the wake of the First World War, in which he served on the Western Front. This exhibition will emphasise the impact on Moore’s work of its historical and intellectual contexts: the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis and new ideas of sexuality, and the influence of primitive art and surrealism.

The exhibition will explore the defining subjects of Moore’s work, including the reclining figure, the iconic mother and child, abstract compositions and seminal drawings of London during the Blitz. The exhibition will assemble a group of Moore’s great reclining figures carved in Elm wood, the largest number ever to be brought together. These beautiful, heavily grained works show the development of the reclining figure over the course of Moore’s career. The recurring motif of the mother and child will be explored throughout the exhibition. Moore called it his ‘fundamental obsession’, and presented a complex vision of the maternal relationship, ranging from the nurturing bond of Mother and Child 1930-31 (Private Collection), to Suckling Child 1930 (Pallant House).

As Official War Artist, Moore made a series of drawings of Londoners sheltering in the London Underground from the Blitz. Henry Moore will include a selection of the most important of these, made between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1941. The drawings transformed Moore’s reputation, not only documenting, but helping to build, the popular perception of the Blitz. His depictions of rows of sleeping figures lying huddled in claustrophobic tunnels captured a sense of profound humanitarian anguish and the fragility of the human body. This continues in his work of the 1950s, reflecting the aftermath of war and the prospect of further conflict.

Visit www.tate.org.uk

ART/DESIGN

JOHN BALDESSARI
EAR SOFA; NOSE SCONCES WITH FLOWERS (IN STAGE SETTING)
Tate Modern 13 October 2009 – 10 January 2010

Opening on the eve of his eagerly anticipated retrospective at Tate Modern, Ear Sofa; Nose Sconces with Flowers (In Stage Setting) is the first ever tableau vivant created by acclaimed American artist John Baldessari, a living installation which epitomises the wry wit, visual ingenuity and conceptual vigour which has defined the artist's practice for almost five decades.

The installation centres on an ear-shaped sofa, on which a model sits, posed and poised, flanked on either side by a pair of nose-shaped, wall-mounted sconces. The sofa is framed by a large decorative semi-circular arch, and the gallery's glass frontage is shrouded by a sheet of sheer stretched silk. The palette, proportions, and geometrical forms deployed in the construction of the tableau are redolent of an Art Deco aesthetic, which further contributes to a sense of grand theatricality. The allusion to (or illusion of) Hollywood's Art Deco glamour in the exhibition's design has been developed by Baldessari in collaboration with acclaimed American production designer Naomi Shohan, whose credits include her BAFTA-nominated work on American Beauty (1999), Training Day (2001), I Am Legend (2007) and The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010).

The retrospective exhibition John Baldessari: Pure Beauty is concurrently on show at Tate Modern, and will then tour a number of museums internationally:

Tate Modern, London: 13 October 2009 10 January 2010
Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona: 11 February 2010 25 April 2010
LACMA, Los Angeles: 27 June 2010 12 September 2010
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC: 17 October 2010 9 January 2011


http://thepandorian.com
http://www.tate.org.uk

ART/DESIGN

ART – THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
MAN RAY, AFRICAN ART AND THE MODERNIST LENS
OCTOBER 10, 2009 – JANUARY 10, 2010

While the influence of African art on modern painting and sculpture has been explored, Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens examines a parallel history, the role of photography in shaping international understanding of African objects as art, in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition reveals photography’s complex engagement with African art by exploring African art in the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, surrealism, and the worlds of high fashion and popular culture, at the same time as it investigates issues of race, gender, and colonialism during the modernist era.

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitsky, 1890–1976) was an artist in many mediums, but he is best known as an avant-garde photographer. His Noire et blanche (1926), showing a white model with a black mask, is an icon of modern photography. Born in Philadelphia, Man Ray lived in ultramodern circles in Paris, from 1921 until the German occupation of the city in 1939. There he produced experimental photographs, fashion photographs, and celebrity portraits. He also produced a large body of photographs featuring African artifacts. In the wake of French colonial exploits, objects of a kind that he had previously encountered in museum or gallery settings in New York were widely accessible to him in Paris, appearing in flea markets, curio shops, as well as in private collections.

The photographs in Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens include well-known photographs by Man Ray, as well as recently discovered documentary images by him, and the work of other photographers. Over 100 photographs, more than half of them by Man Ray, the rest by his contemporaries, including James L. Allen, Cecil Beaton, Walker Evans, and Alfred Stieglitz, are presented alongside many of the objects they depict. Among these are over 20 masks, carved figures, and utilitarian objects, the majority from diverse West African cultures.

The photographs themselves give no indication of the purposes the objects served in their original contexts, and by presenting images and objects together Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens offers a rare opportunity to understand exactly how lighting, camera angle, and cropping manipulated the objects to serve Western ideas of beauty and art. The exhibition also documents the histories of the objects and explains their uses.

The Phillips Collection
1600 21st St., NW, Washington, DC 20009
Near 21st and Q Streets, NW

http://phillipscollection.org/exhibitions/current/index.aspx

ART/DESIGN

ART/DESIGN - BIRD'S NEST

Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing in 1957 as the son of Ai Qing, one of modern China’s most renowned poets. He entered the Beijing Film Academy in 1978. In 1979 and in 1981 he took part in exhibitions held by the avant-garde group "Xingxing (The Stars)." Soon afterwards Ai moved to the U.S.A., returning to China in 1993. Since his return Ai has worked in publishing and also been active in his support of young Chinese artists through his China Art Archive & Warehouse (CAAW). In 2000 he was one of the curators of the influential exhibition "Fuck Off." Since designing his own residence and studio in 1999, Ai has been involved in over 70 architectural and urban planning projects. His recent exhibitions include the Venice Biennale 2008, 2008 Liverpool Biennial, Documenta 12 (Kassel, 2007), and "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection" (touring since 2006).

Ai Weiwei is one of contemporary China's most exciting creators, with a range of activities including everything from art and architecture to design, publishing, and curating. In the last few years, Ai's international reputation has grown dramatically through a series of highly acclaimed projects, including his contribution to Documenta 12 in 2007, and a collaboration with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

http://www.mori.art.museum

ART

ART - MARCUS TOMLINSON

Fashion photographer Marcus Thomlinson’s film interpretation of Hussein Chalayan’s “aeroplane dress” cleverly gives flight to the dress."Marcus is one of the few photographers who captures the clothes and does justice to the ideas of the designer," says Chalayan.

Check it out: http://marcustomlinson.co.uk

ART

BEHIND THE SCENE - MARY ELLEN MARK

Mary Ellen Mark has achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions, magazine editorial work as well as her work as a movie set photographer. Mark has worked on numerous films including Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Moulin Rouge, Babel and Sweeney Todd.

She is one of the most recognized photographers of our day, who has spent decades traveling around the world documenting the lives of the poor, destitute and forgotten with great respect and compassion.

Mary Ellen's film work is currently on exhibit at the Staley Wise Gallery in New York City.

http://staleywise.com/current_exhibition.html