by kunstvlo on
November 10, 2009 23:03.
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At the Bibliothèque National de la France, site Richelieu, there is a wonderful retrospective exhibition on the work of photographer Michael Kenna. The exposition is part of the second edition of the Photoquai Photography Biennale (an intiative of the Musée du Quai Branly).
Although it is a retrospective exposition it is manageable for visitors. Compared to museums such as the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay that really try to kill you with an overload of objects, this exhibition is a god’s gift. If I count correctly, 8 themes nicely structure Kenna’s work. And there is also a virtual exhibition which I highly recommend!
Central in Michael Kenna’s work are landscapes: people are completely absent. The French photographer Eugène Atget, known for his pictures of Paris in the second half of the 19th century, is his great example. Kenna’s work is very poetic because of the way he plays with different perspectives, lines and shadows. It is far from boring (a resentment that often goes together with landschapes) because he is capable of giving the landscapes a high sense of dynamism.
In the following way, curator Anne Biroleau describes the way Kenna sees the sky: ‘Le ciel, chez Kenna, n’est pas l’Ether des poètes, cristal pur, immateriél et transparant, mais une atmosphère, théâtre du vent, des nuages, de la lumière sourde, de la pluie, de la brume, du brouillard, des fumées. Il est une manifestation des puissances cosmiques, non une métaphore’.
To conclude. Michael Kenna definitely makes Art but when you take a closer look at his website, you see he also makes a lot of commercial work. Adds for Audi, Saab, and so on…
Funny.
tagged: the guide, michael kenna, paris, quai branly, bibliothèque national
by kunstvlo on
October 29, 2009 02:12.
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Canada is a melting-pot of identities, that’s for sure. In Montréal everyone seems to be foreigner and at first sight that doesn’t seem to be a very big problem. On the contrary. There is an open-mindedness I really like: you can easily talk to people or people address you first. Also at the conference, the organizers do whatever they can to make it a pleasant experience for everyone.
Hurrah for globalization? I’m only staying for a couple of days so I am bound to be stuck with my impressions at first sight, but when I see how easily I can relate to Canadian people globalization is a fact.
Yet, at the conference Museality and intermediality. New Museum Paradigms it soon became clear that human relationships are something quite different than cultural traditions.
It is remarkable how we are all locked in by our own cultural traditions. Concerning museology there is a real rupture between Francophone and Anglosaxon traditions. Anglosaxon museum studies consider the museum as part of a social world and basically as a power institution. Change, transformation and dynamism are central concepts. In Francophone museology however the object seems to stay the key concept. Consequently, discourses on the meaning of the museum are quite different.
For me, a Flemish speaking Belgian citizen, this is all very interesting. Especially because it is not at all clear to me to which ‘cultural or museological tradition’ we belong. What a relief! It must be quite a burden carrying ‘a tradition’ around all the time.
I prefer to travel light, to have an open mind and to learn from all traditions along the way.
tagged: the guide, montréal, conference, museology
by kunstvlo on
October 28, 2009 12:05.
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Canada, Montréal. That’ s where I’m staying since Monday night. I’m going to attend the conference Museality and intermediality. New Museum Paradigms organised by (amongst others) the Centre de recherche de l’intermédialité (CRI) of the University of Montréal, the Laboratoire de muséologie et d’ingénierie de la culture (LAMIC) of the University of Laval and the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT).
So I’m here for very pleasant professional reasons. The conference only starts today: yesterday I set off to explore the city and to get rid of my jetlag. As a museums and galleries person I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACMTL) and the Museum of Fine Arts. By the way, the Montréal subway looks and feels just like the subway system in Brussels! Very strange. Earlier, the airport had also given me this same feeling of home.
In the MACMTL I saw exhibitions on work of Francine Savard, Tacita Dean and Tricia Middleton. The Museum of Fine Arts was very proud to present its collections of Mediterraean archaeology, decorative arts and design, European art, Canadian art, non Canadian art, art Inuit and contemporary art.
Both museums are what one would expect from museums. Nicely lit large boxes with artworks peacefully hung next to eachother on walls. Above, typical for the Montréal museums seems to be: very friendly staff ready to take your coat, to present a delicious Waldorf salad in the restaurant and to sell you very interesting books. Nice!
But still. When you have travelled as far as I have this is not enough. I had expected to see different things, I was ready to be overwhelmed by refreshing new museum approaches…
By the way, of course I saw things that were new to me like the wonderful collection of Inuit artworks in the Museum of Fine Arts, but they were displayed in such an old-fashioned way that I could’t get out of the room quickly enough.
Questions that popped up in my mind.
Why does every museum of fine arts in the world need an archaeological collection of Old Europe? In this day and age where we are all connected and travelling possibilities have increased tremendously it seems so over the top.
What does it say about our western cultural legacy when all art made in the twentieth century seems to refer to the European avant-garde?
What does this all mean for the museum as an idea? Hasn’t the time come to profoundly reconsider what museums are doing? It has.
tagged: the guide, montréal, macmtl, museum of fine arts, conference
by kunstvlo on
October 15, 2009 22:31.
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In the few weeks I have been trying to shape the Edosia blog it has surprised me how difficult it is to find good examples of ‘pedagogical’ sites.
For artists and arts organizations, the main purpose of being online is creating an awareness about themselves. It is all about communication and promotion. So it seems.
Although I have already come across a lot of inspiring cases, I was getting a bit disencouraged. How are websites and other interfaces used to really engage with audiences? What triggers visitors to stay tuned, to participate: to interact?
The blogspot the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has recently created, made me shiver. Instantly I knew this was a good case. Finally!
The Van Gogh Museum not only owns a major collection of paintings and other work by Vincent Van Gogh. It is also responsible for the enormous collection of letters Vincent and his brother Theo wrote to each other. Several researchers have been studying the correspondence for decades which has resulted in a shelve of large books.
Research is one thing. Disclosing it another. Who reads it? Probably not a lot of people.
The blogspot is the perfect solution to this problem. With the blog as format, the museum has brought Vincent back to life. You can read small pieces from his letters (as if he were blogging them himself) with excellent references (links) to works from the museum collection. For example, on the 9th of October he talks about making a painting about his mother and links to the eventual painting now hanging in the museum.
All very poetic. But let’s not forget: only possible thanks to the massive pile of research done over the years…
tagged: the guide, learning tools, communication strategies, van gogh
by kunstvlo on
October 14, 2009 22:08.
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More than interesting. That’s how I would describe the project Democracy developed by Jim Richardson.
The goal is to invite – and I quote – designers and illustrators to respond to the theme of Democracy and submit their artwork through the exhibition website. The work which is chosen for the final exhibition is decided by a public vote and we are encouraging those entering the competition to actively promote the work they enter, and in doing so, promote the exhibition.
Great, although I have to admit I was astonished to find out that an expert in museum marketing (of all people!) is responsible for it. With Democracy Jim Richardson wants to explore new ways of viral marketing by using a crowd sourced model.
Tell me: this is Irony, isn’t it? Or should it be called Progress?
tagged: the guide, democracy, marketing, jim richardson
by kunstvlo on
October 09, 2009 14:31.
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This video shows a very interesting talk by Deborah Wythe, Head of the Brooklyn Museum Digital Collections and Services. It is on the use of lantern slides in the beginning of the twentieth century and the influence of this specific technology on the way people viewed the world.
In this day and age where still and moving images literally colour and shape our world, it is startling to realize it was so completely different once (and not that long ago)…
tagged: the guide, brooklyn museum, new york, lantern slides
by kunstvlo on
September 29, 2009 12:47.
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To know where we are heading, we have to know where we come from. In other words: we have to make an inventory of projects done in the past, inspiring artists and leading institutions.
During my humble expedition into the world of new media arts, I quickly came across the Dia Art Foundation and its Artist’s Web Projects.
In a very comprehensive way Dia supports extraordinary artists’projects that might not otherwise be supported by more conventional institutions (as they say it) by giving them an online forum.
Because they have consistently been doing this since 1995, the Artist’s Web Projects has grown into a database of reference.
The overall view is very clear due to the fact the contents are highly curated. This way of working also has a down-side: Artist’s Web Projects is very canonical and hardly leaves any room for beginning, experimenting artists.
Still, it is a great example and obligatory knowledge for everyone dealing with new media art!
tagged: the guide, dia art, new york, canon, highly curated
by kunstvlo on
September 14, 2009 15:02.
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Two weeks ago I had a meeting in Amsterdam and being in this wonderful city I made use of the situation to visit some museums. Impossible to go by one of my old time favorites, Foam.
The photography museum had several interesting exhibitions scheduled. Massimo Vitali’s ‘holiday’ pictures caught my eye because of their beauty on the one hand and their sense of awkwardness on the other. I was also very impressed by the work of young talent Kim Boske: she really swept me of my feet with her ‘tree-photographs’. Or how a simple idea can have so much meaning…
Maybe it is a bit exaggerated but I have the bad habit to visit exhibitions either on their opening or their closing day (or there about). When I am able to grasp expositions that are this wonderful, I feel extremely lucky to have made it just in time. ‘Spreading the word’ is rather useless though since people won’t be able to visit after me. This is especially annoying when you want to recommend an exhibition like Avenue Patrice Lumumba by South African photographer Guy Tillim (also in Foam). Pictures of everyday life in several African countries after periods of prosperity. The sense of passed splendour, of people trying to hold on to a life they once knew… This really is an exhibition that is worth seeing.
And what a pleasant surprise it is when luck is on your side and you find out that this particular exposition is travelling and is even landing in your hometown! Like mine! Please go to Extra City, one of Antwerp’s greatest Kunsthalle at this very moment and live Tillim’s photographs. It is really worth the trip.
tagged: the artist, foam, extra city, amsterdam, antwerp, guy tillim, patrice lumumba
by kunstvlo on
September 11, 2009 09:39.
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It is commonplace to state we are living in a visual world. We’re surrounded by images but we should ask ourselves to which degree we really understand them. For seeing them doesn’t mean we are able to read them as well. What’s an image trying to tell us? What’s the (underlying) message? The medium that illustrates this perfectly is photography.
Although we have the illusion that a snapshot helps us to grasp a moment in time, reality most of the time gets completely distorted through the photographer’s lens. Photo-technology really makes fun of us here. What do we see? Pictures full of beautiful colors, touching sceneries and nice people. But why is it often so different in our recollection? Our past in pictures is usually a lot more vived and spectacular than we have experienced it in real life.
A great example in this respect is the work of photographer William Egglestone. Egglestone is known for the photographs he took in the 1960s and 1970s and for his use of bright colours. Consequently, his pictures of American daily life often emanate a kind of nostalgic sweet atmosphere but this is deceiving. When you try to look further his works very quickly lose their idyllic character and feelings of discord and isolation arise instead. The same desolation you can find in paintings of Edward Hopper.
The key concept here is ‘visual literacy’, i.e. the ability to look at images, to analyse, interpret and evalute them critically. In future posts I’ll get back to this and try to explain how you can help your viewers to improve their visual literacy.
For what you see is not always what you get.
tagged: the guide, learning tools, visual literacy, william egglestone, photography, edward hopper
by kunstvlo on
September 10, 2009 10:16.
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Getting your message across. Doing it in the most beautiful and striking way. That’s what an artist wants. Mario Cacciottolo’s Someone Once Told Me is a wonderful example of this urge using photography and the internet.
Like a lot of succesful things, the basic idea is simple. You are asked to write down a line someone once told you. The next step is to take a black and white photograph of yourself holding the plate with words in your hands and to send it to the Someone Once Told Me platform. Mario collects and selects the photographs and also makes them himself. For the record: he says to use the platform to improve his personal photographing skills.
This project, that started off in 2006, has become a really fascinating art project that succesfully integrates art and technology. It is especially intriguing because it involves people in everyday life situations. You and me: all ordinary and at the same time exceptional. This video gives a nice round-up.
tagged: the guide, sotm, art project, literature, photography, mario cacciottolo, everyday life
