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Vienna honours Jean Prouve
Updated: March 11 2009, 13:19 CET
VIENNA: In 1747 empress Maria Theresia created the Hofmobiliendepot in Vienna for the furniture of the monarchs. Today this museum, housing the Imperial Furniture Collection, opened her doors to ‘Jean Prouvé. The Poetics of the Technical Object’ a comprehensive and systematic exhibition of the furniture and architecture of the French designer Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) in cooperation with the Vitra Design Museum in Germany. The most original furniture pieces are on show together with several original architectural elements as well as numerous architectural models, photographs and original sketches on architecture and furniture.
Prouvé coupled handicraft with industry and design with architecture extending his experience yet further with each new step - as craftsman of Art déco, as manufacturer and constructer of furniture and architecture and, finally, as a highly valued teacher.
Anyone interested in the Habsburgs and/or the history and development of furniture and interior design should head to this collection. It began life as Empress Maria Teresa's warehouse for unwanted and outdated furniture from the many Habsburg properties. Subsequently, it has developed into an important design museum that also boasts the world's largest collection of chairs. In total, there are some 650,000 items on display, many of them were made by famous artists: Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann have all contributed to the Habsburg’s interiors up to the early 20th century.
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Antwerp’s passion for passion
Updated: March 9 2009, 11:10 CET
ANTWERP: Over the last years Antwerp has become one of the European cities of fashion. One of the main goals for many tourist to the Belgium city with a passion for fashion is shopping. No wonder the Antwerp Fashion Museum (Momu Modemuseum) just opened her doors to a unique exhibition about the use op paper in fashion: Paper Fashion.
Beginning with a unique collection of 1960s’ paper dresses from the Atopos collection, the show focuses on the use of paper and related materials in modern and contemporary fashion. Among the highlights are designs by Hussein Chalayan, A.F. Vandevorst, John Galliano, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Van Saene and Issey Miyake. In 1966, Scott Paper Company of the United States introduced the first throwaway paper dress as a propaganda stunt for their products. Almost instantly, paper clothes became a much-hyped phenomenon that would entrance America and Europe for several years. By the end of the 1960s, the trend had passed its peak and ‘paper fashion’ gradually disappeared from the high streets of the West. The Atopos Cultural Organization collected almost 400 paper dresses from this perio.
Since the early Eighties, when Belgian designers turned the fashion world upside down with their deconstructed clothes - all raw edges and inside out seams - Antwerp has become the fashion equivalent of Lourdes. It's a place of pilgrimage, with disciples visiting the crumbling old Academy of Fine Art to see where Martin Margiela and Co sewed their first stitches, and then to Louis, the shop that was the first to sell their collections. Louis is still the best starting point for any shopping tour. It's a surprisingly small boutique, on Lombardenvest 2, in the old town. But it's the perfect place to get better acquainted with the best of Belgian fashion, from Ann Demeulemeester to Veronique Branquinho and Raf Simons.
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Dame Kiri Te Kanawa to keep away vandals
Updated: March 6 2009, 10:34 CET
AUCKLAND/WAITAKERE CITY: Classical music concerts and opera have always been great to attract people to your town or venue, but Bob Harvey, the mayor of Waitakere City New Zealand’s fifth largest city near Auckland, discovered a new goal for classical music. Christchurch authorities are considering using Barry Manilow's music to deter young people from congregating in public and intimidating passers-by, but in Waitakere City, classical music performers have already done the job, The New Zealand Herald newspaper reported today.
Harvey, said classical music has been playing through speakers in an area between the city's transport hub and council offices for the last three years. He said the effect of classical music on teenagers was like older people "being locked up in a room with hip hop - it would be enough to drive you crazy". There has been no defacing or damaging of art works and sculptures in the area since the music was switched on.
Especially the New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has been credited by the local mayor with keeping vandals away from his city centre because they find her singing "bloody hideous".
"If it's not your music, and you really don't like it all, why would you, how could you, stay around?"
Waitakere City is home to many of the country's finest professional painters, photographers, sculptors, writers and musicians, and to a wide spectrum of recreational artists working in every medium.
There also is the Waitakere City Orchestra, a dynamic new orchestra in the West of Auckland in New Zealand. It is designed to bring quality live performances of orchestral music to the community. Founded in 2003 by composer-conductor Brigid Ursula Bisley who is the Musical Director, the orchestra comprises of a core of approximately 40 players with a blend of professional and amateur musicians, which can expand for symphonic repertoire or contract for chamber works. It rehearses and performs on average three to four times a year using the Glen Eden Playhouse Theatre as its principal venue
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Michael Palin starring at Sofia International Film Festival
Updated: March 4 2009, 11:22 CET
SOFIA: Tomorrow the 13th edition of the annual international film festival of the Bulgarian capital Sofia (SIFF) starts presenting more than 100 feature films, 30 documentaries and two programs of short films, screened in seven different venues. As special guest to this years edition Michael Palin presents a panorama of selected excerpts from his best-loved films: “Life of Brian”, “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”, “Around the World in 80 Days”, “Sahara”, “Himalaya”, “Pole to Pole” and “Michael Palin’s New Europe”. Director Wim Wenders feature film “Palermo Shooting” is presented for the first time at a special gala screening for the closing of the official program at March 15.
The Sofia International Film Festival, the biggest film festival in South-East Europe, is growing fast in scope, acclaim and popularity. Taking place in March of every year, the festival has become probably the most anticipated event in Bulgaria's cultural calendar. It started humbly enough in 1997 as what some journalists have described as little more than a rock festival with some music videos. However under the leadership of Stefan Kitanov it has grown to its current size.
Sofia is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Bulgaria, with 1.4 million people living in the Capital Municipality It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of the mountain massif Vitosha, and is the administrative, cultural, economic, and educational centre of the country. Sofia houses numerous museums, notably the National Historical Museum, the Bulgarian Natural History Museum, the Museum of Earth and Men, the Ethnographic Museum, the National Museum of Military History, the National Polytechnical Museum and the National Archaeological Museum. In addition, there are the Sofia City Art Gallery, the Bulgarian National Gallery of Arts, the Bulgarian National Gallery for Foreign Art as well as numerous private art galleries.
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Frankfurt looks at how Darwin inspired the arts
Updated: March 3 2009, 11:11 CET
FRANKFURT: This year we celebrate the 200th birthday of the British naturalist Charles Darwin and a lot of museums in Europe and the US jump on the bandwagon, commemorating the man and his ‘Origin of Species’. Last month the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt opened her doors to a unique exhibition about the implications of Darwinism for the fine arts. On show are about 150 paintings, drawings, and lithographs as well as rare documentary material, the exhibition showcasing artists such as Martin Johnson Heade, František Kupka, Odilon Redon, George Frederic Watts, Arnold Böcklin, Gabriel von Max, Alfred Kubin, and Max Ernst, and thus spans the period from 1859 to the mid twentieth century. All of the artists featured in the exhibition shared an interest in the natural sciences and either read texts by Darwin or by those who reacted to him.
The Schirn Kunsthalle is one of Europe’s most renowned exhibition institutions. Since 1986, more than 180 exhibitions have been realized, among them major surveys dedicated to Vienna Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism, to "Women Impressionists" and the history of photography, to subjects like shopping and the relationship between art and consumerism, the visual art of the Stalin era, the Nazarenes, or the new Romanticism in present-day art. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Frida Kahlo, Bill Viola, Arnold Schönberg, Henri Matisse, Julian Schnabel, James Lee Byars, Yves Klein, and Carsten Nicolai were presented in comprehensive solo shows.
The name of the Schirn Kunsthalle is historical. The German word “Schirn” originally meant an open-air stall for selling goods. Until the end of the Second World War, there was a Schirn street at the downtown location where the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt has been located since 1986.
For more information about Darwin 2009:
- darwin-online.org.uk/2009.html
- www.darwinday.org
- www.darwin200.org
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