Kunsthaus Bregenz

LOTHAR BAUMGARTEN
KUB-Publications

Catalogue book
Seven Sounds / Seven Circles

CD set
Seven Sounds / Seven Circles
Mohicanituk I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

http://www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at

Two publications were presented in conjunction with the exhibition
“Lothar
Baumgarten: Seven Sounds / Seven Circles.” One is a CD set featuring

seven audio pieces, phonic compositions with a sculptural character.

Accompanying these acoustic works are photographic images and a text

by the artist. The second publication is a book edited by Kaira M.
Cabañas
in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Bregenz. It includes four newly
commissioned essays that reflect Lothar Baumgarten’s work and way of

thinking, thereby representing the complexity of his artistic
standpoint. In
addition to the essays, the volume includes an interview with the
artist by
Christian Rattemeyer, an exhibition history, as well as a selection
of
Baumgarten’s photographs taken at Denning’s Point on the Hudson River

in the years 2003–06. As with previous books by the artist, the
form and
typography of both publications were conceived by Walter Nikkels for
and
with Lothar Baumgarten.

Catalogue book
German and English editions
Ed. by Kunsthaus Bregenz and Kaira M. Cabañas
With contributions by T. Bartscherer, C. Buckley, J. Curley, C.
Rattemeyer,
and A. Rosenblum Martín
Typography: Walter Nikkels
168 pages, 22.5 x 30.5 cm, 48 illustrations, softcover

CD Set
7 audio CDs
Supplementary booklet: 16 pages, 14.5 x 13 cm, 8 illustrations
Special edition with signed print

Onlineshop: http://www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at

Contact:
Antje Roth
Phone 0043 5574 485 94-416
Fax 0043 5574 485 94-408
a.roth@kunsthaus-bregenz.at

Kunsthaus Bregenz
Karl-Tizian-Platz
Postfach 371
A-6901 Bregenz
T(+43-55 74) 4 85 94-0
F(+43-55 74) 4 85 94-8
kub@kunsthaus-bregenz.at
http://www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at

MUSEUM LUDWIG

Sigmar Polke, Untitled
1989
silkscreen 98,2 × 66,9 cm
© Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke
The Editions

04.07. - 27.09.2009

MUSEUM LUDWIG
Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 

D-50667 Cologne

http://www.museum-ludwig.de

Sigmar Polke’s editions are not something the artist “does on the
side”. They highlight the reproductive techniques which his paintings
also return to time after time: printing, complete with raster dots,
photographs and Xeroxes. The editions literally render what the
paintings simply translate. But they also translate what the artist
himself has painted, or anticipate it. The editions are an important
element in Polke’s enquiry into the representation and duplication of
the world.

Our exhibition covers the entire history of the editions, right back
to over forty years ago. Rare prints and reworkings are as much a
part of this as the inserts he put into newspapers in runs of many
thousands. Since 1963 and above all after 1967, Polke has produced
numbered editions. Back then was the heyday of prints and graphic
art, but Polke adopted a highly unusual technique: offset printing.
Offset printing, which has only ever interested a handful of artists,
is also the medium in which many of Polke’s images first originated.
Because offset is the medium of the yellow press, whose illustrations
Polke has used for his own purposes. So printing the editions took the
artist’s preoccupation with mass communications back to its very
origins. But Polke would not be Polke if a great deal didn’t happen
along the way. Not only does he tear the images out of their original
contexts and place them in new company, he manipulates them with every
trick in the book. Every conceivable effect is employed – from
enlargement and colorizing to smudging, stretching and compressing.
Along with every possible technology – from overprinting, punching,
and dousing to embossing and spraying. Not to mention every possible
material, from gossamer-thin paper to printed cardboard. Since the
late sixties, Polke has also enlisted on his own sources; he
photographs himself, beggars in Cologne, buildings in Paris, and
much, much more. But the real work often begins in the darkroom,
where he can play with exposure times and the enlarger.

And these almost magically transformed photographs likewise appear as
editions.That Polke crumples photos up and then photographs them again
fits into his philosophy, which accords more power to the
representation than to what is represented. And yet another
technology has proved handy here: Xeroxing. The original can be
quickly whisked through, the exposure interrupted or deliberately
spoilt. Which results in heads with elongated necks, sloping
mountains and wild shadows – a cabinet of deformed curiosities.
Scarcely another artist has shown such zest in experimenting with
printing, and scarcely another has proved to be as funny as Sigmar
Polke.

Thanks to a generous donation by the husband and wife collectors Anna
Friebe-Reininghaus and Ulrich Reininghaus, Museum Ludwig is now in the
position to present all the richness of this oeuvre, created by one of
the most important and innovative artists of our times.

Art-Agenda - art-agenda.com

July 3, 2009

Opera Bastille presents Anselm Kiefer / Jörg Widmann
Opéra Bastille

Photo: Charles DUPRAT

Anselm Kiefer / Jörg Widmann
Am Anfang (In the beginning)

Opéra Bastille
Seven performances from 7 to 14 July 2009 at 8pm every night

Reservations and information:
Telephone 08 92 89 90 90
Telephone from outside France +33 1 72 29 35 35

http://www.operadeparis.fr

Am Anfang (In the beginning)
Opéra Bastille, Paris
7 to 14 July 2009
* 14 July: free matinée, open admission

With a view to celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille, Gerard Mortier, Director of the Opéra national de Paris, wished to entrust the reknown artist Anselm Kiefer with the entire creation (staging, sets, costumes) of a remarkable visual and musical performance, in association with the composer Jörg Widmann, who wrote the music.

This exceptional commissioned work will showcase the policy Gerard Mortier has been conducting at the Opéra Bastille: that of opening lyric theatre up to other artistic disciplines. For this final production under his guidance, Gerard Mortier wanted to bring about a powerful and remarkable encounter combining stage, painting, sculpture and music. With this musical work of a new kind - one which is both an installation and a performance - he makes his mark by demonstrating the openness of the Opéra de Paris to the interdisciplinary richness of contemporary art. It is not by chance that Gerard Mortier called on the talent of Anselm Kiefer. Am Anfang (In the beginning) extends the artistic exploration the German artist initiated at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 2003 with Elektra. After his success with the public with Monumenta at the Grand Palais and the commissioning of a major work - Athanor – for the north staircase of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée in 2007. Today, Ansel
m Kiefer takes possession of the stages and back stages of the Opéra Bastilla with an artistic elegy of (dis)proportionate measure. Conceived in close collaboration with Jörg Widmann, the German clarinettist and composer considered among the most brilliant of his generation, this determinedly contemporary new production reinvents the stage of lyric theatre.

With Am Anfang (In the Beginning), Anselm Kiefer creates a completely new work of art of international breadth, to forcefully take position in the history of art of music. An agnostic pageant, it describes the chaos and annihilation of peoples and civilizations – where the chosen people met with crushing defeat, mistreated by the great powers of the Fertile Crescent situated between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The “Fertile Crescent” is the name given to this region of the world, one of the cradles of our civilization lying between the Tigris and the Euphrates in those times when God seemed to be a vengeful, terrible and arbitrary deity of inexplicable cruelty. Job’s complaints and accusations of the Divine therefore have echoes in the three Abrahamic religions.

Dust and debris lie at the foot of twelve stark towers in this haunting landscape. The entire set carries with it a sense of inconsolable despair, in which the words of Isaiah and Jeremy resound with a pitiless relevance to today. Because in the end, isn’t History a perpetual series of new beginnings?

A metaphysical work transcended by theatrical illusion, it links the wandering of the Jewish people, incarnated by the Shekhina, to the annihilated ancient empires such as those of Babylon, Jericho, Persepolis, Nineveh…and to the ruins of post-war Germany symbolized by the “Trümmerfrauen”, or rubble women, in the same cycle of end and new beginning.

A work, In the Beginning is a production which for the first time in the Opéra Bastille’s history takes place on all its stages and back stages. Unimaginable perspectives open up before spectators from the main stage, creating a number of smaller spaces where various actions play themselves out, linked to each other by the words of the prophets and Jörg Widmann’s music, the rich melody of which casts its spell. The music indeed provides an infinitely subtle accompaniment to what the artist has to say, such that the rubble of History, like the work of art itself - where all to come has already been faced - is only the beginning concealing the end it holds within itself.

Am Anfang (In the beginning) by Anselm Kiefer will be offered in seven exceptional performances from 7 to 14 July 2009 at the Opéra Bastille. The matinee of Tuesday, 14 July will be at no cost, as tradition requires.

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia

REWRITING THE COLLECTION
9 September 2009 - January 2010

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
Madrid. Spain

http://www.museoreinasofia.com

A museum’s collection intrinsically traces notions of history and
time. But what history or histories do we tell? We are aware that,
traditionally, museums have been trapped within a canonical view of
history that seeks to establish sequential order between time
periods. This traditional approach aims to explain works of art with
documents and testimonies from an era without understanding that the
images and objects far surpass the circumstances from which they were
born. In this light, this approach fails to understand that time is
not a past time, but the time of memory, which the historian
interpellates insofar as this memory contains heterogeneous times.

We reclaim a space for critiquing history while upholding the value
of narrating the past, not as a means to discover “the way it really
was,” but, following Benjamin, to seize hold of memory in the present
state of emergency “when it flashes up at a moment of danger,” thereby
“wresting tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower
it.” This history materializes in a web of open-ended, fragmentary
narratives that speak to us of hands, gazes and minds, all of them
synchronized at one moment, crystallizing into an image, an object or
a document. Above all else, this narrative involves conveying and
activating experiences—experiences that refer to a past time and
yet remain in the present, ones that can only be perceived from the
present. Its end is not to find an escape route, but to enrich
reflecting on experience, a kind of learning that does not stem from
indoctrination, but from activating the ability to respond critically
to the world and, of course, to the museum itself.

This position implicitly entails the need to create a new vocabulary,
a new nomenclature. The Greek tragedies taught us that children bear
their parents’ burden, or just the same, that we are born with a
destiny predetermined by a language and social structure that shape
it. But it is also true that we can rewrite our own history, even
though in order to do so we must forge new concepts that allow us to
apprehend and explain a different reality. The museum has chosen to
distance itself from the linear narratives of modernity, as they have
traditionally been exhibited, but also from the banal oblivion of
postmodernist history, evident in new exhibition models. We have also
wanted to distance ourselves from conventional distinctions between
center and periphery, thereby attending to the complexity of
relationships established between the local and universal. In the
following itinerary, we propose four large sections that follow a
historical sequence, without wishing to impose a strict chronological
order upon them. These groupings propose alternative routes and lines
of flight that leave the narrative open-ended. In this manner,
visitors are invited to create their own routes and form their own
interpretations

http://www.museoreinasofia.com

Kunstverein Hamburg

Karla Black
Marcel Tyroller / Fred Sandback
July 4 - September 6, 2009

Opening
Friday, July 3, 2009, 7 pm

Forms of exhibitions
Lectures
July 11 - July 12, 2009

Der Kunstverein, since 1817.
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg

http://www.kunstverein.de

The works of Kostis Velonis having so far occupied the upper floor of
the Kunstverein alone, the sculptures of the Scottish artist Karla
Black (*1972, lives in Glasgow) are now the focus of attention.
Whereas Velonis’ sculptures were from the outset developed to provide
a platform for the further activities of the Kunstverein, they now
perform this function in particular measure. In keeping with the
additive exhibition format, Karla Black rearranges some of Velonis’
works, removes others, and installs her own sculptures in this
framework. A large work based on powdered gypsum and developed
especially for the venue together with a hanging sculpture form a
dense ensemble that rechoreographs the exhibition hall and creates an
exciting, new spatial image. When in September the third artistic
position concludes the additive exhibition concept, the works of
Karla Black will in their turn be presented in a changed context and
spatial setting.

On the ground floor, two minimalist artists meet: Marcel Tyroller
(*1971, lives in Munich) and Fred Sandback (1943-2003). Tyroller’s
“Schnur 2″ (Cord 2) throws a loop of red thread against the walls of
the exhibition space. The line of the thread takes on every
unevenness of the wall, every peculiarity of the space as it finds
its way, tracing a constantly changing mural. The choice of material
and the reduced form recall the American artist Fred Sandback, who is
among the most important protagonists of minimal art. Sandback used
threads of various colours, a material which appealed to him no least
because of the slightly shimmering nature of the fibres, to create
sculptures with no body or clear definition that relate to a specific
spatial situation. Marcel Tyroller translates the reposing emptiness
of Sandback’s abstract works into a contemporary, mechanistically
mobile concept of minimalist sculpture, at the same time transcending
its bounds to adopt a painterly gesture that in the 1970s had been
excluded from minimal art.

Forms of exhibitions
Saturday, July 11 - Sunday, July 12, 2009

Exhibitions are designed experiential systems in which art and works
of art, objects and information are placed in relation to one
another. Messages and meanings are negotiated at the spatial,
aesthetic, ideological, and emotional levels. In recent years,
exhibition practice has expanded in the temporary sphere beyond the
classical “white cube” to include new sites for the presentation of
art such as public space, numerous international biennials, and the
internet.

The two-day symposium at the Kunstverein Hamburg is devoted to the
various aspects of staging exhibitions. The aim is to explore the
importance of the exhibition as a medium and to develop an
understanding of how exhibition practice not only shapes content but
has itself become content. The selected contributions combine
historical references with current positions, examining key issues:
Is the exhibition a medium that can be continued ad infinitum or
expanded? Does the expansion of exhibition practice necessitate a
different public? How important is the exhibition as a component of
cultural production?

Speakers: Martin Beck, Beatrice von Bismarck, Ann Demeester, Laszlo
Glozer, Jan Hoet, Monika Pessler, Hanno Rauterberg, Dorothee Richter,
Nicolaus Schafhausen, Raimar Stange, Florian Waldvogel, and Antonia
Wunderlich

The Kunstverein is funded by Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde
für Kultur, Sport und Medien.

For further information please contact Beate Anspach,
presse@kunstverein.de

Art-Agenda - art-agenda.com

July 2, 2009

e-flux journal - issue #7
e-flux

e-flux journal - issue #7

Summer 2009

Available online: 

http://e-flux.com/journal

The processes of the factory have entered the museum in ways that Warhol and Duchamp could never have dreamed: the amount of art production now by far exceeds what can be processed or understood, and this often creates a degree of mistrust and an absence of common points of reference with which to not only discuss, but also to gain anything from the sheer volume of artworks placed on display today. The time to engage and digest work is often replaced by additional work—it just keeps coming down the line.

Hito Steyerl describes how the workers who left the factory have returned to the same space—now converted into a museum—as visitors. With the displacement of cinema to the space of the museum, Steyerl discovers the shape of a new form of labor in spectatorship at the social factory of the contemporary museum. When so much cinematic duration is placed on display—more than a single person can possibly see—making sense of an exhibition’s totality then defers to the multitude to collectively reconstruct the meaning of the factory as a space of production and a space of work. “If the factory is everywhere, then there is no longer a gate by which to leave it—there is no way to escape relentless productivity.” (see full essay here)

Raqs Media Collective compares this multitude to a million earthworms collectively turning the soil of cultural work, each doing what they do best and in their own time. Though there may be no escape from the trials of performance and production, “Earthworms Dancing: Notes for a Biennial in Slow Motion” suggests that one way of reclaiming a relationship with what is produced could be through a measured patience. When one finds so many large-scale exhibitions in disparate locations making more or less the same claims, a “capaciousness and generosity towards realities that may either be, or may seem to be in hibernation, dormant, or still in formation” may also be the only means of engaging the often radically disparate contexts from which these similar expressions emerge. (see full essay here)

Omnia El Shakry gives an account of how the Cairo Youth Salon became a hotbed of debate on the nature of artistic autonomy and curatorial sovereignty. When the Egyptian Ministry of Culture attempted to counteract its own bureaucratic inertness by inviting onto the jury of the annual exhibition a group of young artists and curators from outside its usual roster, the government institution found itself faced with a number of difficult questions concerning the complexity of its own role as a highly centralized arts institution vis-à-vis an increasingly savvy and dispersed art public. In subjecting its institutional understanding of public responsibility to artists working according to their private will (while still addressing a public), the Ministry inadvertently placed itself at the center of a debate about the complex role of a dynamic institution that must simultaneously serve and challenge a public. (see full essay here)

Pauline Yao looks at how the overwhelmingly top-down paradigm of contemporary art in China can be overturned by means of initiatives that emerge from more modest forms of artistic engagement. If such forms of “engaged autonomy” can find ways of balancing the persistent realities of market interests in Chinese contemporary art with artistic approaches that either employ commerce in productive ways or assert their relevance without validation from the market, more immanent and sustainable systems of production and reception certainly might emerge. (see full essay here)

One form of sustainable production and reception might be the “Art of Conversation.” In her conversational sequel to her contribution from issue #3, Monika Szewczyk suggests that “we may be increasingly interested in considering the aesthetics of people talking together.” Examining the core components of discursive practice, she traces its effects and affects back to class, oral traditions, and liberal education; recalls the power of a simple voice speaking truth to an emperor; and looks at silence as a strategy. (see full essay here)

Boris Groys’ “Self-Design and Aesthetic Responsibility” elaborates on the unforeseen side effects of modernist design, first discussed by the author in e-flux journal #0 in “The Obligation to Self-Design.” Now that the modernist ethic of truthful and transparent design has been consolidated into an aesthetic mode to be invoked arbitrarily, any form of “honest design” becomes the object of deep suspicion. Artists have spoken to this with various forms of self-denunciation, confirming and re-confirming this suspicion by similarly designing themselves as charlatans and profiteers. Yet however these approaches may address the skepticism of an audience faced with artworks evaluated according to dubious market values, the question of how art can assert its own inner value under these conditions remains an open one. (see full essay here)

In the last installment of Michael Baers’ “Concerning Matters to be Left for a Later Date,” Annika Eriksson asks our protagonist to pay a visit to Folkets Park in Malmö, a place that poses a number of questions for Baers about the origins and fate of social democracy in Sweden. Struggling with Eriksson to reconcile socialist optimism with the boredom of social consensus, Baers compares Folkets Park to “a socialist wildlife preserve”—a sign of ideological dismay—and returns home to receive a pamphlet in the mail for “Artisternas Park”. . . (see full essay here)

Finally, Brian Kuan Wood crosses two contributions from issue #6—by Marion von Osten and by Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques—in a reflection on the possibilities for asserting a universal legitimacy for artworks. If somehow the agency claimed by self-builders in response to the failed universalist aspirations of modernist town planning were taken in their individual instances as discrete proposals for entirely new towns, a mode of logic might emerge that is capable of asserting an inherent, however speculative, value for works of art. (see full essay here)

Jeu de Paume

Martin Parr
Russia. Moscow. Fashion Week
2004
© Martin Parr
Magnum Photos / Kamel Mennour

Parrworld: The Collection of Martin Parr
30 June - 27 September 2009

Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
France

http://www.jeudepaume.org

Parrworld: The Collection of Martin Parr

Curated by Thomas Weski.
Designed by Jasmin Oezcebi and Franck Vinsot.

Jeu de Paume is pleased to show an important exhibition dedicated to
the British photographer Martin Parr. “Parrworld” presents the both
funny and satiric universe of this constant observer of the
contemporary society. It gathers his latest photographs, as well as
those from his own collection, but also many objects and curiosities
he has been collecting throughout the world.

The objects
Among the themes evoked by these diverse objects, we find the age of
the Soviet Sputniks, the reign of Maggie Thatcher, the pop group The
Spice Girls and 9/11 – all events or phenomena that have entered
the collective memory, largely because of their prominence in the
media and association with strong visual imagery. Parr always chooses
his everyday objects and curiosities for their ability to symbolise
and crystallise the Zeitgeist. Their thematic organisation affords a
new perspective on these items of very diverse origin. “I am also
very attracted to objects which are ephemeral. Their significance and
cultural context changes as the world moves on. Many of these objects
are associated with people or events that are bound up with the
glories of a certain time and place. When these glories fade, the
object takes on a certain resonance, and that is the driving force
behind the collections represented here.”

Photography collections
Parr’s favourite social themes are also reflected in the collection
of photographs, presented here in British and international sections
(approximately 80 and 25 photographs, respectively). The first part
comes from what is the biggest private collection in England. Here,
social documentary photography is found alongside works from the
1970s and 80s by Tony Ray-Jones, Chris Killip and Graham Smith.
Artists such as Keith Arnatt, Mark Neville, Jem Southam and Tom Wood
represent contemporary British photography. The international section
features images that have influenced Parr or with which he feels a
strong personal connection, ranging from photographs by masters such
as Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and William Eggleston, to pictures
by friends like John Gossage and Gilles Peress, as well as work by
Japanese photographers, including Osamu Kanemura, Kohei Yoshiyuki and
Rinko Kawauchi.

“Luxury”
2004 - 2008
“We are much too rich for our own good.” In “Luxury,” Martin Parr
examines the phenomenon of wealth around the world, which he
considers just as problematic as poverty.To make this new series, he
travelled around the globe photographing fashion shows, art fairs,
luxury markets and horse races in cities like Dubai, Durban and
Moscow, but also took in event like the Oktoberfest in Munich.
Modesty not being the most obvious quality of the jet set, who on the
contrary love to flaunt their new and superficial wealth, Parr
highlights the grotesque in order to produce an uncompromising study
of this new international plutocracy, following on from the spirit of
his earlier projects on the middle and working classes.

“The Guardian Cities Project”
2008
The daily newspaper The Guardian commissioned Martin Parr to do a
report on ten UK towns: Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge,
Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle. Each
town was featured in a supplement distributed free with the
newspaper, comprising a text by Parr evoking his memories and
personal impressions, and colour photographs of the cities and their
inhabitants. Jeu de Paume will present these double pages as well as
prints of the photographs featured in the supplements.

Exhibition produced by Haus der Kunst, Munich, in collaboration with
Jeu de Paume, Paris.

The Jeu de Paume receives a subsidy from the Ministry of Culture and
Communication.

It gratefully acknowledges support from Neuflize Vie, its global
partner.

Irving Sandler and Marylyn Dintenfass at Babcock Galleries on June 3, 2009

Renowned art critic Irving Sandler interviews artist Marylyn Dintenfass about her exhibition, Good & Plenty Juicy at Babcock Galleries

Art-Agenda - art-agenda.com

July 2, 2009

Nouveau Musee National de Monaco presents “Etonne-moi !” Serge Diaghilev et les Ballets Russes
Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

SERGE LIFAR
Portrait of Serge Diaghilev, 1960s
Oil on plywood
150 x 195

Collection Nouveau Musée National de Monaco

Crédit photo. Marcel Loli
© D.R.

“Etonne-moi !” Serge Diaghilev et les Ballets Russes

Monaco, Villa Sauber from 9 July - 27 September 2009
Monaco, Salle des Arts in the Sporting d’Hiver from 9 July - 30 August 2009

Villa Sauber – Nouveau Musée National
de Monaco

17 avenue Princesse Grace

98000 Monaco

Tél. + 377 98 98 91 26 / 19 62

Fax. + 377 92 16 73 21
http://www.nmnm.mc

Salle des Arts du Sporting d’Hiver
From the 9th of July to the 30th of August 2009
Open everyday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. – Free entrance
Villa Sauber
From the 9th of July to the 27th of September 2009
Open everyday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

In 2009 and 2010, all the Principality’s cultural institutions are celebrating the Centenary of the Ballets Russes with events devised by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and also the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, the Orchestre Philharmonique, the Printemps des Arts festival etc.

The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco opens these celebrations with “Etonne-moi!” Serge Diaghilev et les Ballets Russes, a magnificent exhibition centred around the figure of Diaghilev and displaying 260 items illustrating the Saisons Russes that he directed from 1909 to 1929.

Coproduced by the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation in Moscow, “Etonne-moi!” Serge
Diaghilev et les Ballets Russes officially opens in the Principality on 8 July 2009 in Villa Sauber. Following the Monaco exhibition’s first public outing this summer, it will then travel to the State Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow where it will be shown from 27 October 2009 to 25 January 2010.

“Surprise me!”
“(…) I was at the absurd age when one thinks oneself a poet and I sensed a polite resistance in Diaghilev. I questioned him and he answered: “Surprise me ; I’ll wait for you to surprise me!” That sentence saved me from a showy career. I quickly realised that one does not astound a Diaghilev in a couple of weeks. From that moment, I decided to die and resurrect (…).”
Jean COCTEAU – Letter of 1939

In May 1909, Serge Diaghilev revolutionised the world of dance with the Ballets Russes’ first performances at the Châtelet theatre in Paris, performances imbued with vitality, grace, originality and virtuosity. Diaghilev’s masterful productions from 1910 to 1920 brought together the greatest dancers, choreographers, artists and composers, among them Nijinsky, Pavlova, Fokine, Massine, Bakst, Picasso, Goncharova, Stravinsky and Satie.

The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco’s exhibition features 260 items belonging to international public and private collections and is centred around the figure of Diaghilev and the artists with which he worked. Its intention is also to highlight the Ballets Russes’ creations in Monte-Carlo, notably Narcisse, La Chatte and Le Train Bleu.

The exhibition at Villa Sauber will comprise paintings, preparatory drawings, models of stage sets, costumes and written and sound archives, dating from 1909 through 1929. These exhibits are drawn from European, Russian and North American collections.

In addition and thanks to the Monte-Carlo SBM Group’s support, the sumptuous Salle des Arts in Monaco’s Sporting d’Hiver is also participating in the exhibition by displaying the famous stage curtain “Le Train Bleu” of Pablo Picasso.

Important cultural institutions are partnering this exhibition: the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum, the State Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Glinka Museum of Theatre and Music in Saint Petersburg and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The scientific management has been entrusted to John E Bowlt (professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles) and Zelfira Tregulova (Vice-director of the Moscow Kremlin Museums) and the exhibition is being curated by Nathalie Rosticher Giordano, Conservator of Heritage at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco.

Pierre Passebon has been asked to create the intimate display design for Villa Sauber.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a generously illustrated catalogue with contributions by specialists in the Ballets Russes’ history and the visual arts, including Alexander Schouvaloff, Nicoletta Misler, Jean-Claude Marcadé, Lynn Garafola, Olga Brezgin, Elena Fedosova, Evgenia Ilyukhina, Vadim Gaevsky and Sjeng Scheijen. This catalogue will be published in French, Russian and English by Skira.

Ludwig Museum

Robert Capa
A Loyalist militiawoman
Barcelona, August 1936
© International Center of Photography,
New York
Collection of Hungarian National Museum

Robert Capa
3 July - 11 October 2009

Ludwig Museum - Museum of Contemporary Art
PALACE OF ARTS
H-1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell u. 1.
Phone (36 1) 555 3444
Fax: (36 1) 555 3458
info@ludwigmuseum.hu

http://www.ludwigmuseum.hu

“The precocious Budapest teenager who would eventually become known to
the world as Robert Capa did not aspire to be a photographer. He
wanted to be a writer – a reporter and a novelist.” (Richard
Whelan) Capa’s evolution into a press photographer and war reporter
(all the while entertaining the idea of filmmaking) was fundamentally
determined by history, as well as by factors like the accelerated
technical developments in photography, the changes in the printed
picture press in the 1920s as a result of the influence of motion
pictures, as well as the increasingly refined techniques and
strategies of photographers.

Capa distinguished himself among the ranks of war reporters who
thought, – with the visual appearance of magazine pages already in
mind –, in series of images that rolled like film footage, and who
had the courage and the ability to “get in close” and show aspects of
war and fighting on the front lines in a form that had hitherto been
impossible, partly due to technological limitations and partly
because of the restrictions of censorship.

Capa worked for a number of US and European agencies; his photo
reports appeared in the columns of such publications as Vu, Regards,
Ce Soir, Life, Picture Post, Collier’s and Illustrated. At the same
time, in addition to his work as a photo correspondent, being one of
the founders of the Magnum photo agency (1947), educating and
supporting young photographers were of primary importance to him.

Following his death in 1954, his brother Cornell Capa, in addition to
his own work as press photographer, strove to preserve and introduce
to the world the oeuvre of his brother and his colleagues. As a first
step, he expanded the International Fund for Concerned Photography,
which he had co-founded with others in 1956. Then, in 1974, he
established the International Center of Photography (ICP) –, one of
the world’s most prominent institutions of photography, simultaneously
a museum, a school and an archive – with himself as director.

Between 1990 and 1992, Cornell Capa and Richard Whelan looked through
Capa’s more than seventy thousand photos and chose 937 of them, the
most outstanding photos of his oeuvre from 1932 to 1954, to represent
the cornerstones of his life’s work and his career as a press
photographer.

In 1995, from the 937 negatives that had been selected, three
identical, excellent quality series were produced using traditional
photographic technique. These consisted of 40×50 cm enlargements and
marked with Robert Capa’s embossed seal. It was determined that no
additional series could be made after this time. Of the three series,
one remained in New York, the second one found a home in the Fuji Art
Museum of Tokyo, and the third set was purchased by the Hungarian
Ministry of Culture and added to the Historical Photo Collection of
the Hungarian National Museum.

Besides the 937 photographs that constitute what is known as the
“Definitive Collection”, the Hungarian National Museum also acquired
48 original Robert Capa vintage copies dating back to the same time.

The backbone of the exhibition consists of selected groups of
photographs. The more than 200 images lead viewers through the key
stages of Robert Capa’s carrier as war correspondent through
highlighted themes of his oeuvre, in chronological order.

The exhibition starts off with Budapest – presenting family photos,
portraits and other documents – and moves on to the first serious
commission in Berlin (the series on the speech given by the exiled
Lev Trotsky in 1932, in Copenhagen) and the difficulties of the Paris
years. Then we arrive to the most definitive stage in the oeuvre, the
three-year period (1936–1939) spent photographing the Spanish Civil
War and the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which Endre Friedmann /
André Friedmann became Robert Capa, one of the most famous war press
photographers in the world. Next we see the seats of world war
operations: photos capturing the North African, Southern Italian and
Sicilian fronts as well as the Normandy Landing on June 6, 1944. The
“D-Day” series, which also served as inspiration to film director
Steven Spielberg, is followed by images documenting the denigration
of the French women who collaborated with the Germans and the
liberation of Paris. The sequence of wartime photographs ends with
images of the Ardennes Offensive and the advances of the Allied
Forces. Capa’s post-world war work is represented by his reports on
the establishment of the State of Israel and the associated
conflicts, the immigrants and the refugees, as well as the material
from his journey to the Soviet Union with John Steinbeck in 1947 and
the photos of his 1948–1949 trip around Eastern Europe, which also
include some Budapest shots. The chronological sequence ends with
Capa’s photographs of Indochina and the photos taken on May 25, 1954,
immediately preceding his death.

A separate section is devoted to the photographic documents of his
social life, which became inextricably intertwined with his work as
press photographer. His portraits which were taken in parallel with
his war reports capture people that were important to him –
colleagues, friends and lovers – as well as many prominent figures
of the era, including Pablo Picasso, Ingrid Bergman, John Steinbeck
and Ernest Hemingway.

The exhibition was organized by the Hungarian National Museum,
Budapest

Curator: Lívia Páldi, chief curator of Műcsarnok / Kunsthalle
Budapest
Exhibition design: Andrea Bak