Got Art?

The Bregenz Festival is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz, Austria. Their ‘Seebühne’ (or floating stage), with 7,000 seats, is the location for large-scale opera or musical performances on a stage over water on the shores of Lake Constance.

De Munt in Brussels was recently awarded with the ‘European Opera House of the Year’ prize. Next week a new opera will open and it might be very interesting.

Oedipe is the only opera of Romanian composer George Enescu and it is one of the forgotten masterpieces of the 20th century. Enescu completed the work in 1932, after 20 years of obsessive composing looking for perfection. The libretto (the text in an opera) is based on two Greek tragedies by Sophocles; ‘Oedipus the King’ and ‘Oedipus in Colonus’.  It’s the first time that the whole life of Oedipus is told chronologically: his birth, the prediction of the oracle, the murder of the father, the encounter with the Sphinx, the plague at Thebes, and his death in Colonus. B

Oedipe portrays Oedipus not as the victim of the Grim Fate, but as a brave man who fights to overcome fate in his quest for his own self.

(I.G. by Gerhard Richter, 1972)

Did you think this picture was a photograph when you first looked at it?

For anybody who thinks that contemporary artists can’t paint, head over to the Gerhard Richter show at Tate Modern in London.  Considered one of the most important artists in the world (he’s about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and is famous for his humour and cynicism), this retrospective picks out the key moments in his career.

Gerhard Richter, born in 1932, was one of the first German artists to reflect on the history of National Socialism, creating paintings of family members who had been members, as well as victims, of the Nazi party. Continuing his historical interest, he produced the 15-part work October 18 1977 1988, a sequence of black and white paintings based on images of the Baader Meinhof group. Richter has continued to respond to significant moments in history throughout his career; the final room of the exhibition includes September 2005, a painting of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in 2001.

The exhibition ends in January, so you’ll have plenty of time to plan a city trip to London. It ‘ll be worth it.

Beyoncé can expect a call from Belgian lawyers any moment now. The American R&B queen copied, in her new music video, the Belgian choreographer Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker.

The similarities are striking. The dancers are in a similar space as the dancers in ‘Rosas dances Rosas’ (a piece by Anne-Teresa de Keersmaeker from 1984), wear the same clothes, but above all: the choreographies are identical. As the singer has not asked for permission Anne-Teresa De Keersmaeker has contacted her lawyers. To be continued…

Update: The dance company ‘Rosas’ from Anne-Teresa de Keersmaeker wants  the new video ‘Countdown’ banned from internet and television. The lawyer of Rosas has contacted Beyonce’s record label Sony. “We want to conduct the discussions in a serene atmosphere, but without our permission ‘Countdown’ should no longer be aired.”

Beyonce already responded to the accusations of plagiarism and calls the dance “Rosas Rosas dance” and “hinterland” a source of inspiration.

The kind of doing we do is as limitless as the human imagination. An idea can be artful or practical, commercial or cultural. It might lead to a better mousetrap or transcend all previous human experience. Good ideas are precious things, The Department of Doing is here to make it happen.

Directions: Add 1% invisible inspiration to 99% perspiration for the original, Thomas Edison inspired formula – and get the job done! Once opened, content will infuse the local atmosphere. Caution required in confined spaces to avoid over-stimulation. Invisible inspiration from the Department of Doing is the finest you can buy and limited production. Use sparingly.

This will come in handy one day at school.

“The project attempts to challenge the idea of personal space in relationship to the human body and its surrounding environment. It is inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s practice of Dymaxion Sleeping, which involves four 30-minute naps over a period of 24 hours, and the material requirements for such conditions. Architecturally, the very close relationship between the human body and the suit acts as the generator of form as well as tool to negotiate between the occupant and his or her surroundings. The structure of the material, a structural pleat, is used as a means to create feelings of connected and disconnectedness as well as provide varying levels of support for different parts of the body. By thinking of the cut pattern as sections of the body, the structure can act as a semi-permeable outer skin.”

It looks like a burca though.
I wouldn’t recommend wearing this in France. Or Holland.

Some people would spend $ 100 000 on a new car or a down payment on a home. Others would convert it to $ 1 bills and use them to completely cover the walls of a room. Those latter people are artists. German artist Hans-Peter Feldman won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2010 and decided he’d like to do something a bit different with his prize money. Feldman managed to have the money converted to circulated bills, ones which have already been used as currency rather than crisp, freshly-minted dollars.

It can be seen as amusing how the artist used his prize money from previous works of art as his next art exhibit, and there are certainly worse ways to put so much money to use. As this exhibit is temporary, though, the money will eventually find its way back into the system. While this doesn’t appear to have been related to the statement the artist is making with this work, it can be easy to relate this to the debt issues in the United States, as well as in other countries.