The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2012 01:33 AM PDT ROY Lichtenstein, the American painter whose comic book-inspired canvases gave the Pop Art movement some of its most vivid images, has been given his first major retrospective since his death 15 years ago. Beginning Oct 14, the National Gallery of Art in Washington is exhibiting 130 of his paintings, drawings and sculptures, reflecting a long and prolific career that ended when he passed away at the age of 73. The show moves to the Tate Modern museum in London next February and, in a less expansive form, to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in July 2013. Its curator Harry Cooper called Lichtenstein, a New York native, "one of the most popular" modern artists alongside his contemporary Andy Warhol. "I don't think he would want to be considered, above all, an American painter. He's a great modern painter. He had a great visual culture, a great background, training in all the history of art." The show begins with an early work, Look Mickey, gifted to the National Gallery of Art by the artist in 1990. It depicts Donald Duck hooking his own tail while fishing on a pier with a guffawing Mickey Mouse. It was an early example of Lichtenstein's appropriation of Ben-Day dots – the tiny coloured pixels that made possible the high-volume printing of pulp comic books in the 1950s and 1960s. Lichtenstein's intention, Cooper said, was to turn the language of comics into a work of art. Also in the retrospective is Whaam! from 1963, arguably Lichtenstein's best-known work, showing one fighter plane blowing up another in mid-air with a minimum of painterly detail and a maximum sense of impact. "He doesn't denounce, and he doesn't celebrate, either. We sometimes don't know what the tone is, what the point of view is. That's part of the definition of Pop Art ... a kind of removal of the artist," Cooper said. Lichtenstein remains highly sought after by collectors. Last November, Christie's auction house sold his 1961 work, I Can See The Whole Room ... And There's Nobody In It!, for a record US$43.2mil (RM131mil) in New York. – AFP |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2012 01:30 AM PDT AN enormous white bathtub made out of bullet-proof material is to catapult Amsterdam's world-famous Stedelijk modern art museum back into the 21st century after an absence of almost 10 years. The museum that over 70 years ago set the trend for the now ubiquitous white gallery walls reopened in September, adorned with its 100m bathtub-shaped extension that architect Mels Crouwel describes as "shiny, flashy ... and white". The Stedelijk's collection of more than 90,000 art and design objects, from Bauhaus to Warhol, is one of the most important in the world, but times have changed since its 20th-century heyday when it had few competitors. Dozens of modern art museums have sprung up around the world, with franchises such as the Guggenheim becoming globally marketable brands for wealthy cities seeking a higher profile and tourist cash. The Stedelijk, founded in 1874 and whose name simply means "City Museum", must now compete with the likes of London's vast Tate Modern, opened in 2000 and already the most popular modern art museum in the world with over four million visitors a year. But the Dutch museum has an edge thanks to its pioneering place in history, and now, of course, its headline-grabbing extension. With its sloping sides and white legs, the extension's seamless 3,000 sqm surface is the largest composite building in the world, a deliberately light addition to the heavy neo-Renaissance style of the original 1895 building. "It's a composite of resin reinforced with very hi-tech fibres normally used in the boat or aerospace industry," said Crouwel. Edwin Dommershuijzen of Teijin Aramid, which makes the fibres – a Dutch invention five times stronger than steel – said that using anything else would not have worked because of expansion and contraction with temperature changes. While the coating is "more or less exactly the same" as that used in flak jackets and helmets, the museum's new extension is not quite bullet proof. That would require several more layers. The Stedelijk's ornate 1895 building rubs shoulders with the now better-known Van Gogh Museum and Rijksmuseum, home to Rembrandt's most famous work, The Night Watch, on Amsterdam's Museumplein (Museum Plaza). The area is a main draw for Amsterdam's 12 million annual visitors, and all three museums are undergoing, or are to undergo, extensive renovations, with the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum both to reopen next April. Nevertheless, work on the Stedelijk and the Rijksmuseum has taken years longer and cost many more millions than planned. Willem Sandberg, a graphic designer who curated the Stedelijk from 1937 to 1941 before becoming its director until 1963, sealed its avant garde status by painting the interior walls white and with a series of daring exhibitions. The venue became quintessentially Dutch, moving away from the stuffiness of museums at the time to create what Sandberg called a place "where you dare talk, kiss, laugh out loud, be yourself, a focus of the life that's lived today." In a sign of the museum's ambitions to internationalise itself, former Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art senior curator Ann Goldstein was named the Stedelijk's first US and first woman director in 2009. Presenting the renovation work, Goldstein hailed a "unique museum that gets under people's skin, that enters into peoples' lives," vowing to continue the museum's tradition of engaging visitors by "turning confusion into curiosity". The museum is proud of the controversy it has caused over the years and remains as critical as it is criticised. This can be seen in the choice of John Knight's Autotypes, A Work In Situ, housed in the "bathtub" and consisting of dining plates with blueprints of new additions to museums around the world on them, including the bathtub itself. The Stedelijk says the work reveals "the uniformity of museum architecture ... the changing role of the museum, which includes serving as a marketing tool for city branding within the ever-expanding spectacle of mass tourism." While the building's architectural contrasts are obvious from the outside, once visitors are inside the exhibition space the interiors are all the same style and visitors do not know if they are in the old or the new. "There are people who really hate it, they think it's impossible to put such a white thing next to such a beautiful old building," said Crouwel, whose father Wim Crouwel was the museum's most famous graphic designer. "But I think it's good, you can see in which time which is built and you should always build for the future and not for the past." – AFP |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2012 01:27 AM PDT The Louvre opens new wing to restore 'full glory to Islam'. IN its boldest development in a generation, the Louvre Museum in Paris has a new wing dedicated to Islamic art, a nearly €100mil (RM398mil) project that comes at a tense time between the West and the Muslim world. Louvre curators tout their new Department of Islamic Art, which took 11 years to build and opened to the public in September, as a way to help bridge cultural divides. They say it offers a highbrow and respectful counterpart to the recent unflattering depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in Western media that have sparked protests by many Muslims. The project was a brainchild of former French President Jacques Chirac and dates back to 2001. It is funded by the French government and supported by handsome endowments from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, Oman and Azerbaijan. The new wing groups 18,000 treasures from an area spanning from Europe to India and includes the oldest love missive in the Islamic world. The exhibits are spread across 3,000sq m over two levels and will be rotated. France is home to at least four million Muslims and leaders of the community say incidents of Islamophobia are on the rise against a background of confrontation with the authorities and rising suspicion of Muslims. The tensions were highlighted by Sophie Makariou, head of the Louvre's Islamic Art department, who said the aim is to show "Islam with a capital I". "That means the civilisation as a whole, not with a small 'i' designating just the religious sphere. We must give back the word Islam its full glory ... and not leave it to the jihadists to tarnish it. Islamic art is not confined to the art of the Muslim community. It is the art of all those who comprised the Islamic world and in it there were Christians and Jews," Makariou said, referring to mixed populations in several Islamic empires. Set in a courtyard commissioned in the 18th century, the new department is housed under a giant undulating gold-coloured aluminium canopy pierced with tiny holes to let daylight filter through and change the mood and the ambience with the sun's rays. "You can call it a flying carpet, a huge tent, a luminous veil or simply golden clouds," said the canopy's designer, Italian architect Mario Bellini. The canopy consists of 2,350 netted triangles fitted together. "The challenge was not to overwhelm the Western language of the courtyard with the collection," Bellini said. "It had to be discreet and in tune with one of the world's best-known monuments." The artefacts from the Louvre's own collection and other private ones include Moghul-era carpets from India, miniature paintings from Iran showing depictions from the Thousand And One Nights and an astounding silver and gold inlaid basin from Egypt or Syria and dating between 1330 and 1340. The basin was used for the baptism of France's King Louis XIII and bears the inscription "Work of Master Muhammed ibn al-Zayn". Makariou pointed to a delicate alabaster-like vase from Syria with Islamic calligraphy as one of the highlights. "It is from Susa and goes back to the ninth century. It is a love letter penned on a vase as was the custom then. It is the oldest known love letter from the Islamic world." The collection brings together pieces from Spain, Egypt's Mameluke "slave" dynasty, the Moghul empire in India, Persia and Central Asia. It also recreates the grandeur of Baghdad, the founding of which in 762 was a major event in urban planning history, with a reproduction of two huge mosaics adorning the Grand Mosque there. There is also a teak door from a palace in Samarra on the banks of the Tigris with an Art Nouveau-style fan-shaped motif ending in a lobed leaf. A myriad of calligraphic styles are also on display with stunning turquoise and white tiles from Central Asia, bejewelled ornaments and ivory objets d'art and enamelled glass objects – an art form conceived and perfected by Muslims. The collection's organiser decided to include images of Prophet Muhammad to show the evolution of Islamic art. In one instance, He appears as a veiled character in a 16th century manuscript. And in a multimedia projection, the Prophet is shown in three separate images with his face exposed – something almost unheard-of today. "I think Muslims will be shocked," said Charlotte Maury, a historical consultant for the Louvre. "That's why we put it on the side. We felt we had to use them, to illustrate (Islamic) history the way we see it." Maury said Muhammad's face was only covered up in Islamic art starting in the 15th century, when Muslim scholars decided to interpret the veiled figure as a more respectful image. The new wing is the latest modernisation project after the glass pyramid in the Louvre's main courtyard by Chinese-US architect I.M. Pei which was commissioned in 1984 and completed four years later. Saudi Prince Waleed Talal's Alwaleed Foundation, which gave US$20mil (RM60.7mil) for the project, said it hoped the "space shall bring much-needed understanding and tolerance by offering visitors ... a glimpse of Islamic civilisation and culture." – Agencies |
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