News: Design and business, art and technology, ideas and good stuff

2024 (created in 1959)

Josef Albers was approached to design the covers for a series of jazz records in what turned out to be one of the artist’s rare graphic design projects. “Josef was deeply influenced by Bach and was fascinated with rhythm. Think about the way that percussion sounds and you realise that the large squares on these covers are almost like kettle drums and the little squares more like hi-hats”, said his commissioning editor. Form, for him, always had to conform to purpose even in graphics.

Albers was a German-born American artist who joined the Weimar and Dessau Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933. He emigrated to the US in 1933 to flee Nazism. He later headed the Yale University design department.

dezeen.com,
albersfoundation.org

Copy ©dezeen.com, image ©Joseph Albers, 1959

October 5, 2024 until January 26, 2025

Artist Miriam Cahn evokes powerful emotions with simple brushstrokes and a vigorous drawing style. Her paintings and drawings depict human atrocities with brutal reality.

stedelijk.nl

Copy ©Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Image ©Miriam Cahn, ‘o.t.’, 8.3.2021, photo: François Doury. Courtesy of the artist; Meyer Riegger and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris

2024

I paint people who are wealthy, powerful, or significant – people who have had an influence on this country, and on me personally, whether directly or indirectly, whether for good or for bad.  Vincent Namatjira

Namatjira’s  portraits resemble caricatures, bordering on outsider art. But according to the art historian Wes Hill they also have “a level of sophistication that only a colourist, not a satirist, could possess”. Born 1983, Alice Springs, Northern Territory, he lives and works Indulkana, South Australia Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.

mca.com.au
iwantjaarts.com.au

Text: Wikipedia, image ©Vincent Namatjira, The Royal Tour 12 (detail), 2020, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

22 June to 13 October 2024

Analogue craftsmanship and experiment

In a world that is dominated by digital screens, technology, speed and overproduction, Cowen seeks to draw our attention to the sublime experience of nature’s beauty through his work. As a photographic artist, he keeps well away from the digital world and has a real hands-on approach to the craftsmanship of the photographic process. He uses self-made enlargers to create large analog prints on thick, wavy photographic paper. He experiments with darkroom techniques and chemical formulas, rendering each print a unique work.

huismarseille.nl

Image: P126, 2020-2023, Digitalisation: Farbanalyse Cologne ©Jeff Cowen, Copy ©Huis Marseille

March 16 until July 14, 2024

Marina Abramović has been a prominent figure in performance and body art since the 1970s and is considered one of the most important founders of this art form. An early proponent of using the human body in performance, she has consistently pushed herself to the limit emotionally and physically, exposing herself to exhaustion, pain and even the possibility of death.

Featuring over 60 works, including photographs, videos, sculptures, four iconic live performances (all making their debut in the Netherlands) and two participatory works, this survey covers her entire impressive oeuvre.

stedelijk.nl

Copy ©Stedelijk Museum
Image Marina Abramović and Uwe Laysiepen (detail), 1978 ©CC CODA Museum-Wikimedia

24 April to 9 July 2024

With a soundtrack comprised mostly of the album Landfall by the legendary Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet, one of the foremost contemporary classical music ensembles, a shared passion of deep sorrow and beauty unfolds on stage. Relinquishment becomes a dedicated search for a crack, and glitches in the movement code turn out to be free, playful, and emotive material.

batsheva.co.il

Image and copy ©Batsheva Dance Company

16 Feb 2024 - 9 June 2024

Extraordinarily productive, innovative, entertaining and a little rough around the edges: Frans Hals was one of a handful of painters who defined the 17th century. His distinctive, freewheeling style of painting became so influential that it’s easy to forget that he was its founder. So after thirty years, it’s high time for a new retrospective.

rijksmuseum.nl

Image: Jester with a Lute, 1620–1625, canvas (detail), Musée du Louvre, Paris. Wikipedia Commons. Copy: Rijksmusem Amsterdam

January 2024

Anselm is a 2023 3D documentary film directed by Wim Wenders, chronicling the art of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The film had its world premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2023 as a special screening, where it competed for the L’Œil d’or.

Described as “immersive”, the film illuminates Kiefer’s work, life journey, inspiration, creative process, and the artist’s fascination with myth and history. The aim is to “blur” the boundary between film and painting.

imdb.com

Copy and image CC ©Wikipedia

7 October 2023 to 11 February 2024 (Nantes) and 11 April to 1 September 2024 (Barcelona)

Valadon was well known as an artist and model during her lifetime, especially toward the end of her career, in the 1920s more specifically, as she helped to transform the female nude that depicted expression through a woman’s experience. She resisted typical depictions of women, emphasising class trappings and their sexual attractiveness, through her realistic depiction of unidealised and self-possessed women who are not overly sexualised. Championed by contemporaries such as Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, her nude work is realistic, colourful and powerfully contemporary. The 2024 travelling exhibition can be seen in Nantes and Barcelona.

https://www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/en/programme/exposition/suzanne-valadon

Copy ©Centre Pompidou-Metz and Wikipedia
Image ©La Chambre bleue (detail), 1923, Public Domain, Wikipedia

October 2023

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”

nobelprize.org

Image ©Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach, copy ©Nobel Prize

29 Sep 2023 - 14 Jan 2024

See a selection of exceptional art from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen this autumn at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The exhibition is based around various themes, allowing for the display of a wide range of artworks from all historical eras.

Exhibits include The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer by Edgar Degas and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room.

rijksmuseum.nl

Copy ©Rijksmuseum, image: Cindy Sherman, untitled, 1981 ©Boijmans van Beuningen

2010 and still so relevant

When you understand the individual parts, you will understand the complex system. Robert Sapolsky

This course covers how to approach complex normal and abnormal behaviors through biology; how to integrate disciplines including sociobiology, ethology, neuroscience, and endocrinology, to examine behaviours such as aggression, sexual behaviour, language use, and mental illness. 25 lectures that will possibly change your life. Robert Sapolsky is if not the best professor-ever, very close to it.

youtube.com

Copy ©Apple podcasts, image: video still ©Stanford

6-27 Sep 2023

Mahagonny: A place where anything goes – as long as you pay.

Leading stage director Ivo van Hove returns to Dutch National Opera with this masterpiece by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Using techniques from the world of film such as green screens and live camera images, he has turned this famous opera about the deceptive city of gold into a highly topical story, one that leaves a lasting impression.

operaballet.nl

Image ©Marta Syrko, copy ©Nationale Opera & Ballet

1 September 2023

British Museum, Centre Pompidou, Smithsonian now in Amsterdam

Director Annabelle Birnie today announced new international partnerships with the British Museum, Centre Pompidou and Smithsonian American Art Museum bringing world-famous art collections to Amsterdam. They mark a fresh start for the museum known as H’ART Museum from Friday 1 September. The new H’ART Museum shows the uniting force of art and opens its windows to the world.

The H’ART Museum’s first major show will be the Kandinsky exhibition held in partnership with the Centre Pompidou in mid-2024. Later, in 2026, H’ART welcomes the British Museum’s Feminine power exhibition.

hermitage.nl/en/hart-museum/

Image and copy ©Hart Museum Amsterdam

Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945)

Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture was part of the German Expressionist movement. Her themes encompassed self-portraits, politics and social criticism, motherhood, war.

Extensive collections can be found at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin (new location at the Theater Building at Charlottenburg Palace) and Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln (reopens end 2023).

kaethe-kollwitz.berlin
kollwitz.de

Images: Self-portrait, lithography, 1934 ©Käthe Kollwitz Museum Berlin, Copy ©Wikipedia

19 April to 14 July 2023

When one is young, one is excited by drama and when one’s old, truth is exciting – Frank Auerbach 

‘I didn’t find actual formal components of my head all that interesting when I was younger, smoother and less frazzled. Now that I’ve got bags under my eyes, things are sagging and so on, there’s more material to work with’.

The eleven drawn and nine painted self-portraits are all recent. As William Feaver says: ‘Self-portraits have the implication of self-regard and there’s absolutely nothing of that in these. They show all sorts of frustrations and irritations and breath held- all the things we feel if we look in the mirror.’

frankierossiart.com

Copy ©Frankie Rossi Art, Images ©Frank Auerbach

June 2023

Anafaza, Ohad Naharin’s iconic piece for Batsheva Dance Company, made its debut in December 1993, on the 30th anniversary of Batsheva’s foundation. Since then, and over two decades, it has been performed in front of no less than 300,000 viewers in Israel and worldwide, and cemented its place in the canon of local culture.
30 years after it was performed for the first time, Anafaza presenting Batsheva Dance Company and Batsheva Ensemble on one stage, with live music performed by Ohad Naharin, Danni Makov, and Avi Belleli (“Tractor’s Revenge”).

batsheva.co.il

Image and copy ©Batsheva Dance Company

March 2023

Understand Russia through the insights of its free-thinkers in exile.

When the shelling of Ukraine began a year ago, free-thinking Russians faced a fateful choice: lie low, resist or flee. Hundreds of thousands decided to leave. For them the war meant the future of Russia itself was now in doubt.

In this eight-part series, The Economist’s Russia editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, finds out what happened to these exiles for a new podcast series. Their stories help solve the mystery of why this senseless war began – and how it might end.

Economist Moscow podcast

Image and copy ©The Economist

10 February - 4 June 2023

Never before have so many Vermeer’s been brought together.

In the spring of 2023, the Rijksmuseum, the national museum of the Netherlands, will dedicate a retrospective exhibition to the 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer for the first time in its history. With loans from all over the world, this promises to be the largest Vermeer exhibition ever.

In contrast to Rembrandt, Vermeer left a remarkably small oeuvre with about 35 paintings. As his paintings are generally considered the most prized treasures of every museum collection, Vermeer paintings are rarely lent out.

rijksmuseum.nl

Copy and image ©Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Ongoing

Since its creation in 1939, Picasso’s Guernica has become a political symbol, an emblem of violence or the vulnerability of civilians.

This website presents the extensive research conducted on the artwork and comprises around 2,000 documents. Gigapixel photography technology enables us to analyse the painting in the smallest details.

Museo Reina Sofía/Guernica

Image ©Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid, 2023. Copy ©Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.

Fall 2022

Often the most important historical experiences are difficult to see. Ukraine tends to exemplify the major trends in European and world history, but sometimes in forms so intense or radical that they escape notice and classification. Ukraine provides an early example of European state formation and an early example of anti-colonial rebellion. Timothy Snyder

online.yale.edu
timothysnyder.org

Image ©Yale

2023

7 October 2022 to 8 January 2023

The exhibition explores how Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) developed his unique style and how the Austrian artist was inspired by the work of Van Gogh, Toorop, Rodin, Whistler, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Matisse and many other artists.

New research has revealed which artists influenced Klimt, and which he admired. Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession art society, where European modern art was exhibited for the first time in 1898. From then on, each exhibition organised by the society offered Klimt a new wave of inspiration and creativity.

vangoghmuseum.nl

Copy ©Van Gogh Museum, image: Judith, 1901, ©Belvedere, Vienna

Since 2022

May 2022 - April 2023

The exhibition displays the evolution of the centuries-old paisley motif that began in Persia as a symbol of nobility adorned by kings and princes, was later adopted by European royalty, and spread across the globe, becoming one of the most iconic and beloved patterns and a symbol of pop culture. The exhibition displays an extensive collection of Persian and Kashmiri shawls together with Judaica, as it evolved in the Jewish communities of the Islamic world. Specially highlighted is the bandana, which first emerged as an Indian kerchief to later become an American icon.

islamicart.co.il

Copy ©Museum of Islamic Art Jerusalem. Image: paisley bandana ©Fashion and Textile Archives/Shai Ben Efraim

Until 4 September 2022

Etel Adnan often took landscape as a starting point for her art. Like Van Gogh, she sought to convey the power of nature on the canvas with a colour palette and painting style all of her own.

Her landscapes – frequently simplified and with intense colours and abstract forms – enter a dialogue with several works by Van Gogh. The exhibition also includes her ‘leporello’ works, the concertina-style books for which Adnan is known, as well as tapestries and literature.

vangoghmuseum.nl

Image: Etel Adnan, ‘Untitled’, 2015, oil on canvas, Collection Jean Frémon. ©The Estate of Etel Adnan. Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris/New York. Copy: ©Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam. 

As from June 2022

The logline for the series states: “Borgen – Power and Glory, deals with some of the biggest political issues of our time; the relevance of the Danish Realm in the modern world, the superpowers’ battle for control of the Arctic – and not least, the climate crisis. The main story focuses on the struggle for power and what power does to people – both professionally and on a personal level.” A must see. With: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard.

radiotimes.com

Text: ©RadioTimes, image: ©Netflix Netherlands

2022

Jean-Jacques Sempé, the celebrated French cartoonist who illustrated the children’s book series Le Petit Nicolas and produced more covers for the New Yorker magazine than any other artist, has died aged 89.

Sempé’s acclaimed cartoons often showed small figures set in vast urban landscapes or contemplating the enormity of nature amid trees or gardens. “Sempé is France,” the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk told Paris Match earlier this year. “Everything is there: irony and tenderness.”

Wikipedia: Jean-Jacques_Sempé

Image: ©Sempé/New Yorker, copy: The Guardian

5th March to 29th August 2022

The display charts Hockney’s pioneering modern experiments from the 1960s to the present day in bringing hand, eye, and optical instruments together. In his use of cameras, digital drawing, the iPad, and digital film, Hockney follows a tradition of creative experiments with optical devices that goes back from Ingres’ proposed use of the camera lucida to Canaletto’s camera obscura.

fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Image ©David Hockney, “Self Portrait, 22nd November 2021″, Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 30”. Photo Credit: Jonathan Wilkinson. Copy ©The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and The Observer.