Tag: my favourite things

Sunday afternoon museum walk

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The new MoMA had recently reopened after a four month closure, the last phase of a multimillion dollar expansion and renovation, and it was high time we explored all that extra space. These are a few of my favourite things:

  • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe || Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper, Berlin – Project, 1921
    Charcoal and graphite on paper mounted on board
  • Heinz Schulz-Neudamm || Poster for the film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang 1926 – Lithograph
  • Film stills from Metropolis, 1927
  • Film still from Metropolis, 1927
  • Film still from Bride of Frankenstein, 1935 – gelatin silver print
  • Film still from Frankenstein, 1931 – gelatin silver print
  • Film stills from Der Golem, 1920 – gelatin silver prints
  • Egon Schiele || Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909. Oil, silver, gold-bronze paint, and pencil on canvas
  • Pablo Picasso || Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-06. Oil on canvas
  • Pablo Picasso || Woman Plaiting Her Hair, 1906. Oil on canvas
  • Edvard Munch || Man’s Head in Woman’s Hair, 1896. Woodcut
  • Julia Margaret Cameron || Mrs. Duckworth, 1867. Albumen silver print
  • Alfred Stieglitz || A Dirigible, 1910. Photogravure

MoMA New York

December 8th, 2019

The Great Tamer

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Time

Humanity’s journey through time. Violence, Beauty, Ritualism, Abstraction, transitioning with each passing scene seamlessly, every brilliantly constructed moment sending electric shocks to the brain, heightening the senses, letting energy flow freely through the body. Life going full circle, tamed only be Time. The Great Tamer.

It takes a certain kind of visionary to conceive and direct a piece as complex as this, and make it feel so effortless and organic, sleek and elegant.

The Great Tamer, by Dimitris Papaioannou

With

Pavlina Andriopoulou
Costas Chrysafidis
Ektor Liatsos
Ioannis Michos
Evangelia Randou
Ioanna Paraskevopoulou
Drossos Skotis
Christos Strinopoulos
Yorgos Tsiantoulas
Alex Vangelis

Full credits BAM Program

New York Premiere, BAM

November 16th, 2019

Joseph Cornell Illuminated

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Hans Namuth

Joseph Cornell in His Backyard, Utopia Parkway, New York, 1969

”It kills me, it’s so good. Let’s pretend I took this, okay?… I used to go to Cornell’s house once a week for I don’t know how long. He would make tea on his ancient, Depression-era stove. He’d turn the gas on, and the flames shot up. He talked a lot, gesturing, in this very fluffy angora sweater he wore. And I’m thinking, I should keep the camera ready in case he goes up. A Flaming Cornell: that’d be amazing! Unfortunately, he never caught on fire. But this portrait is going to upstage the whole exhibit – I may have to set it on fire.” – Duane Michals

From ”Illusions of the Photographer”, an exhibition of the art of Duane Michals, which included this photograph of Joseph Cornell by Hans Namuth and, as far as I was concerned, upstage the whole exhibit, it did.

The Morgan Library

November 10th, 2019

Anselm Kiefer

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Dark || Stark || Emotional || Intense. Art that will stop you in your tracks.

Images from the Anselm Kiefer long-term exhibition:

die Schechina (Sefiroth), 2010
Painted resin dress, glass shards, steel, numbered glass discs, and wire in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Engel-Sturz (The Fall of the Angels), 2010
Painted cotton dresses, wire, steel frame, glass pane, and oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, clay on canvas in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Jakobs Traum (Jacob’s Dream), 2010
Lead ladder, painted cotton dresses, wire, resin fern, and oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, clay on canvas in inscribed glass and steel vitrine

Étroits sont les vaisseaux (Narrow are the Vessels), 2002 (detail)
concrete, steel, lead and earth

The Women of the Revolution (Les Femmes de la Révolution), 1992/2013 (detail)
Lead beds: dimensions variable

Winterwald (Winter Forest), 2010 (detail)
Oil, emulsion, acrylic, shellac, ash, thorn bushes, synthetic teeth, and snakeskin on canvas in glass and steel frames

Velimir Chlebnikov, 2004 (detail)
30 paintings: oil, emulsion, acrylic, lead and mixed media on canvas

MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA
September 2nd, 2019

Rembrandt to Picasso: Five Centuries of European Works on Paper

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Highlights

  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti || Silence, 1870
  • Pablo Picasso || Head of a Young Boy, 1923
  • Edvard Munch || Moonlight, 1896
  • Käthe Kollwitz || The Widow I / The Volunteers || from the portfolio War, 1922-23
  • Edvard Munch || Eva Mudocci, 1903
  • Pablo Picasso || Nude Standing in Profile,1906
  • Tsuguharu Foujita || Portrait of a Girl with Cat, c. 1926
  • Amedeo Modigliani || Adolphe Basler, c. 1916
  • Egon Schiele || Male Nude (Self-Portrait), 1912

Brooklyn Museum

August 25th, 2019

Taliesin West || Peeking Inside

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Every single detail bears the signature of the landlord. Taliesin West was Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and school in the Sonoran desert from 1937 until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. Visiting FLW houses is always a pleasure, but walking inside his own home was a real privilege.

Taliesin West (where even coffee is part of the brand, bearing the distinctive stamp of honour)

January 31st, 2019